In the Wrong House
by starfishstar
Summary: It didn't matter if they were unpredictable Blacks or show-off Potters, or even someone harmless like Peter Pettigrew. None of these boys could be his friends, and it was time Remus started remembering it. He didn't mind, Remus told himself. He didn't need friends.
1. Chapter 1

NOTE: This is a story in seven chapters (and an epilogue). I'll update twice a week.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO:

...the one and only JKR for this spectacular sandbox. I don't own it!

...Kaydeefalls for first planting the idea that maybe James and Sirius weren't fast friends from the moment they met like we tend to assume, in "The Years of the Rat."

...Sam Starbuck for the idea that the Sorting Hat put Remus in Gryffindor because "he needed courageous people around him," in "The Sorting Hat" (part of his Moon Meadow Anthology.)

…Jewels5, I think, was the first I saw give James' dad the profession I've also found fitting for him, in her epic-length story "The Life and Times."

...plus whoever it was that suggested – though they phrased it far more elegantly – that Remus and Peter ended up in Gryffindor, when many would have pegged them as Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff respectively, because the Marauders were simply so very much meant to be.

– – – – –

CHAPTER ONE

"You're in the wrong house, Black," James Potter snapped, his entire slender 11-year-old frame radiating aggression. "Dunno how you ended up here, but we don't want you."

Sirius Black, just as self-assured, just as angry, glared back from across the dormitory. "Lucky for me then, _Potter_, I don't care what you think. At least I don't just go along blindly with whatever my daddy did."

Remus Lupin, hovering by the door and clutching his schoolbag, looked back and forth between them. Two more boys, whose names Remus didn't yet know, were also hanging back, equally unsure how to react to their hot-tempered dorm mates.

Remus was pretty good at reading body language, and he figured the two dark-haired boys facing off from opposite sides of the room were just moments away from coming to blows. The very thought made him feel physically ill.

James advanced a step. "Oh yeah? Well I know what I wouldn't do – show my face in a noble house like Gryffindor, if I had a family like yours."

"You leave my family out of it!" Sirius yelled.

James took another step. "I've heard funny things about some of your cousins."

"I said leave my family out of it. I don't want to have to fight you, Potter." Sirius was a bit taller than James and definitely broader built, but he still looked a little worried. Maybe he thought they would all gang up on him, once James started. Then he seemed to realise he was telegraphing his uncertainty and added, "Not that I couldn't take a scrawny Muggle-lover like you any time."

James launched himself at Sirius.

To his own surprise, Remus found himself tossing his schoolbag aside and throwing himself between them. "Leave him alone!" he shouted, pushing James back from where he'd grabbed hold of Sirius' collar.

Everything in the room came to a halt, as all the boys stared at the skinny little Lupin kid, with his slightly mismatched clothes and a strange scar down one side of his face, standing up to the scion of the Potter line.

James was agape. "He's insulting Muggles. Muggleborns. Why would you defend him?"

"Just don't hit him. You don't solve anything by hitting people."

James stepped back slowly, sizing Remus up. "Well. At least we know why _you're_ in Gryffindor."

Remus flushed, but held his ground.

James threw up his hands. "Fine. Whatever. I promise not to hit him…for now. And by the way, I want this bed." James threw himself onto the four-poster nearest the door before anyone could protest.

The other two boys – a Dearborn maybe? And a boy named something like Paul or Peter? – took the opportunity to creep back out to the common room.

Sirius breathed out. "Didn't need your help," he muttered to Remus.

"But you got it anyway," Remus replied, amazed how calm he was able to make his voice. He was pretty sure he'd never stood up to anyone like that before in all his life. He could practically hear James listening from behind the half-closed curtains of his newly-claimed bed. "So you might as well be grateful, instead of acting like a git."

Something in Sirius' face closed at that and his words unconsciously echoed James'. "Fine. I'm grateful and all. Whatever." He turned toward the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Out."

"It's almost curfew," Remus reminded him, worried this unpredictable boy was going to get all of them in trouble their very first night.

Sirius shrugged. "I won't get caught, then."

He left and there was nothing but silence from James' bed. Remus cautiously selected the four-poster in the corner furthest from the door, and began unpacking his things. Hopefully there he'd be out of the way enough that the others might not even notice when he wasn't in his bed on full moon nights.

He'd have to be more discreet, though. He didn't know quite what had come over him just now, but it was never a good idea to draw so much attention to himself. And Remus was usually so good at fading into the background.

– – – – –

Remus was hurrying back to the common room from the library just before curfew, clutching a stack of books, when he glimpsed movement in one of the recessed window ledges along the corridor that led to the Gryffindor common room. It appeared to be a leg, nearly hidden in the shadows. Remus paused, and closer inspection revealed the window ledge to contain not only a leg, but the entirety of Sirius Black.

"Hey," Remus said cautiously.

Sirius shifted in the shadows. "Hey."

"Um, it's almost curfew. Just if you didn't know."

"I _know._ And I'll be inside on time."

"Oh, okay. Sorry." Remus switched his books, grown heavy, to the other arm. "Uh…what are you doing here, then?"

"Nothing."

Remus threw caution to the wind, surprising himself for the second time that week. "Can I sit there too?"

There was an agonising pause, but then limbs shifted in the dark and there was space free on one half of the ledge. Remus set down the stack of books, rubbing his tired arms with relief. The full moon was only a few days away and he was feeling it in his body already. This would be his first time transforming away from home and he was trying valiantly – and failing spectacularly – not to think about it. Remus wriggled his way up onto the makeshift seat.

"That Potter kid is a prat," Sirius said.

"Oh?" was all Remus could think to say.

"He put a centipede in my bed. And some kind of itching powder yesterday. What'd I ever do to him?"

"…Oh." Remus repeated.

"I wish I _was_ in Slytherin. At least there, I'd know the people who hate me. And why they do."

"I'm sure they wouldn't hate you," Remus offered. "Besides, don't you have cousins in Slytherin?"

"Exactly," Sirius said.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"I wouldn't expect you to. You're Muggleborn, aren't you?"

"No," Remus said, annoyed yet again that this was always assumed to matter. "Only half. My dad's family are all wizards."

"Are they? But not one of the old families, then. I mean, I've never heard of any Lupins."

"What does it matter?" Remus snapped.

Sirius leant forward, his face finally visible in the light from the torches along the wall. "It doesn't."

"Then why are you acting like it does?"

"Because it does in _my_ family."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Most of the time, it doesn't matter. We can all do magic so, whatever, we're all wizards. Doesn't matter who your parents are. But, see, my parents _think_ it does. They're always going on and on and on about the family and our pure blood and how much better we are than everyone else. I mean, you heard the Howler at breakfast." Sirius' cheeks flushed at the memory. "My mum's disgraced. She actually tried to convince my dad to pull me out of Hogwarts. _'Gryffindor? That's just a bunch of common riffraff!'_" He imitated what Remus could only assume were the shrill tones of his mother.

"But you get to stay?"

"Yeah. But only because Father thinks me leaving school would be even more of a disgrace."

"That doesn't mean anyone in Slytherin would hate you, though."

"Yes, it does. They know I'm not like them, and I should be." Sirius shivered a little and pulled his legs in tighter. "Like I said, I wouldn't expect you to understand it."

Remus gritted his teeth. Just when he'd thought they were actually getting on, without Sirius condescending like he always seemed to. "I have to go," he said. "It's practically curfew."

He jumped off the ledge and grabbed his books, just barely glimpsing the way something sad or disappointed flashed across Sirius' face in the shadows as Remus turned away and headed for the portrait of the Fat Lady.

Sirius Black, he thought, was just as arrogant and annoying as James Potter. The pair of them, honestly.

Remus climbed through the portrait hole, found a table, and bent his head over his homework assignment for Charms.

– – – – –

Remus really, really didn't mean to get involved. He'd told himself to keep his head down and do his work and not get mixed up in things, but he'd spent most of his childhood mediating between people, and couldn't seem to stop.

"Why do you hate him so much?" he asked James, after James and Sirius had been thrown out of Potions class for coming to blows – blows that had unfortunately resulted in a certain degree of damage to their classmates' Cheering Concoctions.

James was just coming back from Professor McGonagall's office, nursing a black eye and a dangerous looking scowl, when Remus came across him. Mostly by accident.

"He's a _Black_," James spat out. "They're as dark as they come, Remus."

Remus fell into step beside James, turning back toward Gryffindor tower. "You seemed friendly with him on the train. The Hogwarts Express? I saw you getting off from the same wagon at the station."

"Yeah. That was before I knew he was a Black."

"So you must have liked him all right before you knew his name."

James stopped walking and turned to face Remus. "Look, Blacks are Dark wizards. They're twisted, they have all these mad ideas about being better than everyone else. You _don't_ want to get mixed up with a Black, believe me." He proclaimed this with an air of confidence and started walking again, clearly considering the matter closed.

"But maybe Sirius isn't like that."

"There's no maybe! They're all the same!"

"How can you know that?"

"Believe me, I just know."

"How?"

"It's just stuff you know when… I mean, I just know."

"Just come out and _tell_ me I can't understand because I'm not a pureblood, would you?" Remus recoiled as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He hadn't meant to shout.

James looked affronted. "I would never say that!"

"But you meant it."

"No! No. I meant… Look, my dad's really high up at the Ministry. He runs the Auror department. So it's his job to catch Dark wizards, yeah? I just hear a lot from him, that's all. Merlin, Remus, I wouldn't ever say something like that." James' gaze was intent as they walked on, and it struck Remus that he managed to look startlingly dignified even when apologising. Not hard to believe his dad was head of the Auror department. In fact, that explained rather a lot about James.

Remus was about to answer, when a flash of red hair came into view at the end of the corridor ahead of them. Just as quickly, the maturity or dignity or whatever it was James had been exuding was gone, and he was once again a messy-haired 11-year-old with a mad grin on his face.

"Catch you later, Remus!" he yelled over his shoulder, already trotting off down the corridor. Remus heard a shriek as Lily Evans' pigtail got pulled, then the sound of girlish shouting and some sort of medium-sized objects being thrown.

– – – – –

James Potter was levitating and juggling all the items in his breakfast, as Peter Pettigrew and Ben Davies watched and applauded the particularly impressive moves.

A bit further down the Gryffindor table, Sirius Black slouched lower over his breakfast and muttered, "Show-off," into his porridge.

Privately, Remus was inclined to agree, but the second full moon of the school year was approaching and he was feeling anxious again about drawing attention to himself. Better to stay out of it.

Peter and Ben applauded again. Sirius straightened. "Parlour tricks," he said clearly.

James fumbled his eggcup for just a fraction of a second, but pretended not to have heard.

"_Cheap_ parlour tricks," Sirius added, to no one in particular.

With unhurried precision, James caught and set down each item he had held aloft at wandpoint, then stood up. The other boys around them fell silent. James walked past Ben and Remus, stopping just behind Sirius. Sirius didn't turn.

"You got a problem, Black?"

"Yeah, I do."

"With what?"

Now Sirius stood up and turned to face James, only the bench separating them. "With you. You arrogant…faker. There's nothing so great about you. You just want to be the centre of attention."

Remus, busy hunching his shoulders and trying to pretend he didn't exist, had a not entirely welcome flash of insight. James and Sirius were both the pampered sons of wealthy, pureblood families. They were both used to being the centre of attention, to getting everything they wanted. James Potter and Sirius Black were too…similar? That couldn't possibly be true.

"Yeah, well what about you?" James demanded. "Hexing people just because you can? If you're looking for attention, that's not the way to do it."

Again, a strange ripple of recognition: Hexing people just because you could… Remus had seen James send a tripping jinx at Severus Snape's back in the corridor just the day before.

"At least I don't need a bunch of fawning admirers to feel like I'm worth something," Sirius snapped.

"Oh, bragging about the fact that you've got no friends, are you? Clearly something to be proud about."

"You watch it, Potter," Sirius growled. "Because I _have_ got friends here, even if you're too dense to notice."

"Oh, what, invisible ones? The ghosts?"

"No." Sirius let his gaze flick over to the Slytherin table on the other side of the Great Hall.

James' eyes widened. "Are you threatening me, Black?"

Sirius shrugged.

James took a step in, pushing up against the wooden bench that separated them. "I'm not scared of you. Not for a second."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

Before the others around them had even registered what was going on, they were shoving each other, and again, Remus acted before his brain had a chance to catch up. He found himself by Sirius and James, pushing ineffectually against both of them, yelling, "Stop it!"

James did stop and look at him, out of surprise more than anything else. Sirius tried to get in a swing while James was distracted, but James ducked and Remus pushed Sirius away. All three of them were breathing heavily.

"Just _stop_," Remus muttered. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see motion at the staff table – they were all about to get into trouble. "I don't care what you think about each other or how you act in private, but stop getting in fights in public, okay? You're messing things up for everybody."

James crossed his arms in front of his chest. "All right, no fighting in _public_," he said, emphasising the word. He seemed to be refusing to look at Sirius, keeping his eyes on Remus instead. "You're lucky your friend Lupin stepped in, Black. Next time, I won't go easy on you."

Remus took an involuntary step backward._ Friend Lupin._ But none of these boys could be his friends. It didn't matter if they were unpredictable Blacks or show-off Potters, or even someone harmless like Peter Pettigrew, whose main hobby seemed to be idolising James. Remus couldn't let anyone be his friend. He was here to get an education, maybe even make it to NEWTS before his secret came out, and nothing else. And he ought to start acting like it.

McGonagall descended on them then, nostrils flaring. "Mr Potter! Mr Black! And Mr Lupin! What is going on here?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Brawling at the breakfast table! I would think you'd know this is not how we behave Hogwarts, but apparently the three of you require a reminder. Detention at 7.00 this evening in my office."

"Please, Professor…" All of them turned toward the unexpected source of the voice: Peter Pettigrew. "Remus wasn't fighting. He was trying to stop them."

McGonagall raised an eyebrow. "Is this true?"

"Yes, ma'am," James replied promptly.

"Mr Black?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," he grumbled.

Professor McGonagall considered them all in turn. Remus squirmed under her gaze, James met it stoically, and Sirius gazed off into space, pretending not to care.

"Very well," she said. "No detention for Mr Lupin. But still, I might advise you to keep your distance from Mr Potter and Mr Black. It seems tempers get heated where the three of you are concerned."

"Yes, ma'am," Remus murmured. She needn't even have told him to keep his distance. He was planning to do just that.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Remus found a quiet table in the library and set out his school things, anxiously rearranging the quills. He'd agreed to help Peter Pettigrew with his Transfiguration homework and still wasn't certain whether it was a good idea. Did this violate the No Friends rule? Remus wasn't sure.

A second full moon at Hogwarts had come and gone, and Remus had survived. No one seemed even to have noticed his absence in the dormitory, since he was generally awake and out of the room before most of them anyway. The Shrieking Shack was a safe place to transform, no better or worse than the cellar back home, and Madam Pomfrey knew how to heal his injuries afterward at least as well as his mum did.

Still, he ought to be careful not to get too close to anyone. Even if it was only for homework help.

"Hey," panted Peter, who appeared to have jogged all the way to the library. "I'm sorry, I ran into Peeves and – well, it took a while before he would let me go past." He shuddered. "I really don't think I like him."

"It's okay," Remus said. "Have a seat."

Remus pulled out a chair and Peter flopped into it, pulling books and quills and rolls of parchment haphazardly out of his bag. "Transfiguration book…Transfiguration book…" he muttered, but couldn't seem to find it. He looked at Remus penitently. "I'm sorry. I swear I had it with me."

"Don't worry," Remus said. "I have mine." He pulled the book out of his own schoolbag and opened it, then closed it again. "Actually…no."

Peter looked worried. "What do you mean, no?"

"Let's start with some more basic stuff. Where do you keep your school books?"

"Er…in my bag, I guess. Or in the dormitory."

"Where in the dormitory?"

"I don't know. Next to the bed? Or on the table?"

"What if you set up one place that was always for school books? And then some kind of system for them – arranged alphabetically, by when have each class during the week?"

"Okay…" Peter said doubtfully.

"Just try it out and see if it helps in keeping track of things," Remus suggested.

"I guess so."

"And what about a homework planner? Have you got one?"

"No…?"

"Huh. Okay, I can make you one, I guess." Remus cast an eye over their various belongings scattered across the table, but didn't see anything that could easily be converted into a homework planner. "We'll do it later, in the common room. Then you can write down your assignments and when they're due, and you'll never have to worry about forgetting anything."

Peter was looking at him more and more oddly. "How do you know all this stuff?"

"Well, it's basically what we did in primary school. Just with different classes."

"I didn't go to primary school."

It was Remus' turn to be surprised. "Really? You didn't go to school at all?"

"My mum taught me things at home. It's what most people do. Why did you go to Muggle school?"

"Well, I mean, you have to learn to read… and do some maths…? Learn about history and geography and all that?"

Peter shrugged. "It's not like we need to know Muggle history. And like I said, my mum taught me the basics, how to hold a wand and things."

"Wizards are weird," Remus muttered.

"Your parents aren't wizards?"

"Yeah, they are. But we lived among Muggles, so we had to know how to act like them, right? And people in the neighbourhood would have thought it was strange if I was the only kid not going to school."

"Oh, I don't know if I'd like that," Peter fretted. "Living among Muggles."

"But Muggles are just…normal. You know that, right? They act just like us except that they don't do magic."

Peter looked as confused as Remus felt. "But magic…that's everything."

Remus sensed they had hit an impasse for the time being. "Um. Maybe we should start on the Transfiguration assignment. Before it gets too late, I mean."

"Yeah," Peter agreed, and his face mirrored Remus' relief.

Remus pulled his textbook toward him again and flipped it open. "Okay, so she wanted us to explain Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, then state the five exceptions, and explain why they're exceptions."

Peter looked lost again already, and waited for Remus to prompt him.

"Gamp's Law – what is it?"

Peter still looked helpless.

"Okay, let's break it down. First, just Transfiguration. What is Transfiguration?"

"Er…changing one thing into another thing?"

"Exactly!" Remus gave him an encouraging smile. "So there you've got half of it already. And 'elemental' just means that it describes the basics, right? Here, read this and tell me what you think." He pushed the book toward Peter, who dutifully bent his head over the part Remus had pointed to.

"Oooh, Pettigrew!" came a shrill voice behind them. Teresa Nott had crept up on their table, flanked by two of her sycophantic girlfriends, and was now gloating at Peter. Many of the Slytherins seemed kind of scary to Remus, but Teresa was both scary and loud. "You're getting _tutoring_? Seriously, it's not even Hallowe'en, and already you can't keep up?"

Two bright red spots were appearing high on Peter's pudgy cheeks. "Leave me alone, Teresa," he muttered, looking down at the table.

"Honestly, you're so thick! Why aren't you in Hufflepuff?" She snickered loudly, apparently finding this a very witty joke. Her two friends echoed her laughter.

"He's not in Hufflepuff because he's distinguished himself as a true Gryffindor through acts of bravery," announced James Potter, who had materialised seemingly out of nowhere and was now leaning against the side of their table opposite Teresa.

"Oh?" asked Teresa.

James nodded. "You should have seen him when we snuck out to the kitchens last night. Peeves got in there and was terrorising the house-elves, but Peter scared him off."

"I'm supposed to believe you know how to get into the school kitchens?" Teresa scoffed.

"That I do."

"Oh, yeah? Prove it. How do you get in?"

"If I told you, then I'd have to put up with seeing you there, wouldn't I?"

"See, you don't know."

"Oh, but I do. And I can tell you what's for dinner tonight. Pork chops. And peach cobbler for dessert."

"Right." Teresa rolled her eyes.

"You'll see. And think of me when you're eating your cobbler, would you?" James flashed her a jaunty smile. "Now scram, Teresa. Some of us have revising to do."

And to Remus' complete and utter amazement, Teresa Nott actually did scram.

James threw himself down into a chair across from Remus and Peter, still grinning. "I thought that went well."

Remus opened his mouth, then closed it again. "How did you _do_ that?" he asked finally.

"Oh," James shrugged modestly. "I'm just charming."

"Do you really know how to get into the kitchens?" Peter wanted to know.

"Of course. Found the entrance the first week of school."

Peter was gazing at James with even more longing and admiration than usual.

"I'll show you, if you want. Tonight. You keen?"

"Yes," Peter whispered.

"You could get in trouble," Remus reproved. "I'm sure students aren't supposed to be in there."

"That's why we'll go after curfew, when no one's there to see us."

"No! You can't do that, then you'll be caught for certain and you'll lose us House points."

"Ah, Remus," James said. "Remus, Remus. You need to live a little. Want to come with us tonight?"

"No!" Remus was scandalised.

James heaved a great sigh. "Guess it wasn't meant to be." He pushed back his chair and stood up. "See you two at dinner. And Peter – tonight."

Dinner was, in fact, precisely what James had said it would be, and delicious as usual. But Remus found it hard to enjoy his peach cobbler as he worried his two not-actually-friends might get caught sneaking down to the kitchens that night.

– – – – –

Everything seemed so easy for James, Remus thought. Magic came to him like breathing, so he never really had to try in classes, but still got top marks. He also had an uncanny ability to be mates with absolutely everyone – except, of course, Sirius Black.

Remus noticed these things, just like he noticed that Tristan Dearborn and Alvin Graham were the only Gryffindor boys so far to really pair off into best mates, or that Ben Davies spent most of his time with the Ravenclaws instead, since he had a cousin there who was also a first-year.

But James simply got on with _everyone_. Tristan and Alvin liked him and Peter fairly worshipped him. James spent a fair amount of time with the three of them in various combinations, but he was friendly to Remus too, and with the Ravenclaws and some of the Hufflepuffs. He even got on well with most of the girls in their year, with the one notable exception of Lily Evans, whom he seemed to love to torment.

It must be nice to be liked by everybody and not have any secrets, Remus thought. At the moment, James was laughing and joking with Ben and a couple of Ravenclaws as the two Houses' first-years trooped back up to the castle after a joint flying lesson, carrying their borrowed school brooms.

James was also a natural at flying, of course. Sirius too. Remus, meanwhile, was dismal – his mum had always been afraid to let him fly, so he'd never really had a chance to get the hang of it. Even Peter could outfly Remus easily, and Peter was the kind of person who usually tripped over his own feet.

Remus gave himself a mental shake, because that wasn't a nice thing to think about a not-quite-friend. Yes, Peter was clumsy, but he was also kind and loyal. And it wasn't anybody else's fault that Remus had an overprotective mum and a terrible secret, so he should just stop taking it out on his schoolmates, even if it was only inside his head.

"Hey, Remus!" James called and dropped back a bit from others to let Remus catch up with him. "What are you going to be tonight?"

Remus looked at him blankly.

"For the Hallowe'en feast. We're all going in costume. It'll be a fancy dress feast." James grinned and gave a mock twirl of his school robes to the laughter of the others around them.

Remus felt a panicky constriction in his throat, the same one he got on the rare occasions when a professor asked a question he didn't know the answer to. "I haven't got anything like that," he managed. "I haven't got any costumes or fancy dress things."

"You can borrow something of mine," James offered carelessly. "Come up to the dormitory before dinner, we're going to try things on."

And James dashed off to catch up with the others again before Remus had a chance to work an answer past the anxious tightness in his throat. Costumes and friendly dormitory camaraderie and a James Potter plan…this couldn't end well.

– – – – –

In the end, Peter was a pirate and James an astronaut, after Remus unthinkingly suggested it and then had to spend a quarter of an hour explaining the concept of Muggle space travel to an enthusiastic James. Ben had wandered off again, but Alvin and Tristan joined in and became more or less recognisable as a bat and an eagle respectively.

Tristan had wanted to be a werewolf, actually, but Remus, panicking quietly, proposed various other predators until one mercifully stuck. James really did have an impossible array of strange clothes and stray items in his trunk.

"Now what about you?" James mused, turning his attention to Remus, the only one still in his normal robes. Remus shrugged, nervous at having so much attention focussed on him. "You'll be… Oh, brilliant. What if he's a professor?"

"A professor?" Peter repeated.

"Because you're so serious anyway, Remus. You kind of have that air. So we'll just make his robes look a bit more like what the professors wear…give him specs…"

"And a class roster!" Tristan suggested. "Like he's checking everyone's homework."

Remus found himself surrounded as the other boys adjusted his clothes and handed him props. He noticed movement in the doorway out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Sirius stopped short there, looking at them.

"Hey, Sirius –" Remus began, but the other boy had already turned on his heel and left.

James shook his head in annoyance. The others didn't even seem to have noticed.

"I wonder if Sirius wanted to put together a costume too," Remus offered timidly.

"Nah," James said. "Slytherins don't do 'childish' stuff like this – I heard Chadrick Bole going on about that – and Sirius is still pining for Slytherin."

_Maybe he wouldn't be pining for Slytherin if you hadn't told him he wasn't welcome in Gryffindor, _Remus thought, but he was too overwhelmed by James being so nice to him to say it.

"There, you're done," James proclaimed. Then he shuddered. "Ugh, I wouldn't want to have to turn in late homework to you."

– – – – –

The Halloween Feast was nice enough, Remus supposed, but mainly it was loud. It was getting to the point where he was having trouble thinking, that's how loud it was. He slipped away from the table and out the doors to the Entrance Hall, debating with himself whether or not he was allowed to go just outside the castle doors for fresh air. It was after the usual curfew time, which meant normally they wouldn't be allowed out, but then, this certainly wasn't a normal night, since everyone was still in the Great Hall. Maybe if he just stood in the doorway but didn't go all the way out…?

He heard voices. Indistinctly, but coming from the corridor to his left. Remus hesitated, wondering if he should just go back to the Feast now and stay out of trouble.

One of the voices sounded like Sirius.

Remus sighed, crept a little closer and peered around the corner.

What he saw was Sirius, backed up against the wall, and Lucius Malfoy, looming over him. Lucius was Sirius' cousin's boyfriend and an arrogant seventh-year Slytherin prefect, not to mention much, much taller than Sirius.

"…and because Narcissa is too nice to say this herself, I'm going to do it for her," Lucius was saying. "You do anything else that makes her look bad, and you're going to have to deal with me. Is that clear?"

Remus gulped. Sirius glared back at Lucius defiantly.

"I asked you if that's _clear_?"

"And what are you going to do to me?" Sirius demanded.

Lucius laughed, a measured and mirthless sound. "Oh, this for starters." He waved his wand and Sirius toppled over. When Sirius tried to get up, his legs seemed to be stuck together. Lucius leant over him. "Really, Sirius? You want to stand up to _me_? I'm a prefect, I'm a Malfoy, and you're just the Black family black sheep. Please." He raised his wand again.

"Leave him alone!" someone shouted and then James Potter, of all people, barrelled past Remus and down the corridor, wand at the ready, still wearing his absurd silver astronaut costume, with the makeshift helmet coming askew. Remus blinked and sank a little further back into the shadows.

James skidded to a halt in front of a very surprised Lucius, who had straightened up and was looking at the new arrival through narrowed eyes.

"You're a Malfoy, Lucius, huh? As if we didn't know. Well, I'm a _Potter_, and my dad's the _Head of the Auror Office_, so why don't you just stop picking on people half your size?"

"Or you'll do _what_, Potter?" Lucius snapped.

"Or I'll hex you."

"I'd like to see you try."

"Fine." Without a second's pause, James shot a jinx at Lucius. The older boy parried it easily, but he looked angry.

"Get out of here, Potter," he hissed. "I don't take orders from babies in…in…" The word for whatever it was James was wearing clearly failed him. "…in dress up clothes."

"Oh, I forgot to say," James added pleasantly, "another one of my friends is waiting back there in the Entrance Hall to get Dumbledore the second you try to hurt me." He smiled as if he had not a care in the world.

"Get out of my sight, pipsqueak," Lucius snapped. But it was he, not James, who turned and stalked away.

James, grinning from ear to ear, gave Sirius a hand up and said the counter-jinx for his legs.

"You have a death wish or something?" Sirius muttered.

"Nope," James replied. "But that was fun. Who knew Lucius Malfoy was so easily spooked?"

Sirius shook his head. "You're nutters. And…thanks, I guess."

James shrugged, looking uncomfortable for the first time. "Don't mention it. Anyway, I'm going back to the feast, there's still pie on the tables last I checked."

James and Sirius both turned back toward the Great Hall, and Remus skittered away down a different corridor, suddenly desperate not to come face to face with the other two boys. He felt embarrassed for Sirius, who surely didn't want Remus to have seen him being bullied by Lucius Malfoy. And he was embarrassed for himself, because he'd been there first, but he hadn't stepped in to help the way James had, and had James seen him lurking in the shadows when he went by?

But most of all, Remus was very confused, because with his own eyes he'd just seen James Potter and Sirius Black be civil to one another.

James and Sirius seemed to find it a baffling state of affairs as well, and they were wary around each other for the next few days. But when Sirius saw Severus Snape coming up behind James in the corridor between classes, he shot off a stinging hex before Severus had time to do anything more than raise his wand. James, turning and seeing this, gave Sirius a small, cautious smile.

It seemed they had reached an uneasy truce.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

"Where were you last night?" Sirius wanted to know.

Remus was hunched over a table in the common room, desperately trying to keep his eyes open and his focus on his Defence Against the Dark Arts assignment. It had been a rough full moon and he hadn't slept at all that morning. He'd only barely convinced Madam Pomfrey to let him come back to Gryffindor Tower before breakfast. She'd wanted to keep him in the hospital wing for the day, but then how would he cover that up?

He jerked his head up when Sirius addressed him. "I just got up early to finish my Defence homework," he lied automatically.

"But where were you last night? You weren't in your bed."

"What?" Remus asked stupidly.

"I saw you weren't in your bed last night, or this morning. So I wondered where you were."

"I went to visit my mum," Remus invented wildly. Why, why, why hadn't he planned what to say if this happened?

"Your mum?"

"Yeah, she's ill. Professor Dumbledore let me go visit her."

"And you're back already?"

"I only went overnight."

"How does that even work? You wouldn't have had time to visit very long."

"Uh, well, we don't live very far away." Remus felt his heart sinking. This wasn't going to work. Sirius was going to figure it out, and then everyone would know, and people would be angry and he'd get expelled and he'd never be able to go to school again and he'd never learn any more magic and –

"But what's the point? You could have just waited till the weekend and gone for longer then."

"I wanted to go now. Because some of us actually _care_ about our mums," Remus snapped.

Sirius reeled back and Remus saw his face shutter closed, the way it did whenever somebody said something that cut too close. Remus felt sickened with himself, but it was too late to take it back. Besides, his jibe had the desired effect – Sirius turned and walked out the portrait hole without another word.

Remus dropped his forehead onto the cool pages of his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook and wished he could wish away his words.

– – – – –

"How?" James muttered to himself. "Why?"

They were in the library; Remus was revising with Peter, as he did fairly often, and James was lounging about at the same table, keeping them company, as he did occasionally – for no discernable reason, seeing as he never seemed to need to revise. Remus supposed even James ran out of more interesting places to be once in a while.

Right now, James was staring across the library at Lily Evans, who was working at another table with the awkward Slytherin kid, Severus Snape. "Why?" James asked again, more urgently.

Remus looked up from his half-completed star chart. "Because they're _friends_," he sighed. He'd lost count of how many times he'd had this same conversation in this same place with James.

"Yes, but _why_?" James insisted.

"I suppose they know each other from when they were kids, so they don't care that they ended up in different houses. I mean, look at Ben and his cousin – they're best mates, so it doesn't matter that they're Gryffindor and Ravenclaw."

"But _Slytherin_," James said.

"Yes," Remus agreed.

"_Why_?"

Remus bit his tongue and bent back over his chart of the winter sky.

"Gryffindors are perfectly nice," James continued. "She could hang out with Gryffindors."

Remus said nothing.

"And we're better looking, that's for sure. Eh, Remus?" James nudged him.

Remus didn't reply, but James was waiting for an answer. "Yes," Remus said at his scroll of parchment. "I suppose we are."

James' grin was back. "And we're cleverer than they are, aren't we, Peter? Every single one of us is cleverer than all of them put together."

Peter looked up, slightly alarmed. "Er…are we?"

"Yes," James asserted. "We are. C'mon, mate, if nothing else, you've got the very good sense to hang round with _us_ and not _them_, and that makes all the difference."

Remus cringed at the way Peter's face lit up when James said "mate." It was almost painful to watch Peter wanting James to like him – and all the worse since Remus knew he himself wasn't really any better.

James' face fell again. "Which only means there's no good reason why someone like Lily Evans would want to hang out with a Slytherin idiot like Snape."

Peter, looking across the table at James, demonstrated a startling burst of insight. "Why does it bother you?" he asked. "Do you fancy her or something?" 

"_Fancy_ her? Ugh!" James shuddered. "Ick, no, fancy…no. Just doesn't seem like she should hang round a Slytherin, that's all. I'd feel the same way about any of you, if you had Slytherin mates." He fixed them both with a stare. "Haven't got any secret Slytherin mates, have you?"

"No!" Peter sounded a bit insulted.

"No," Remus echoed, wondering how and when he could possibly have ended up with mates in Slytherin, when he didn't have any mates to begin with.

"Good," James agreed. "Gryffindors forever!"

Then he went back to staring at Lily Evans.

– – – – –

"Why're you staying here for Christmas?" James wanted to know, leaning against the table in the common room where Remus was doing assigned reading. "I saw your name on McGonagall's list."

_Because my parents fight all the time, except when I'm there and they pretend not to, because their poor, delicate werewolf son shouldn't have to deal with that on top of everything else, and honestly that's even worse, _Remus thought. "My parents are going to be travelling," was what he said.

"Travelling? At Christmas? Without you?" James was sceptical.

To Remus' surprise, it was Sirius, lounging by the common room fire and not even seeming to hear their conversation, who came to his defence. "He doesn't have to want to go with them," Sirius said. "Maybe they're visiting boring relatives. Maybe they have stupid ideas about where to go on holiday. What do you know about it, Potter?"

"Staying here too then, are you?" James asked.

"No." Sirius glared into the fire. "Family duty calls."

Remus thought James looked almost sympathetic. "Yeah, family stuff can be a drag," James murmured to no one in particular.

Sirius tossed him a scathing look. "Oh, what would you know about it."

James moved closer to Sirius' armchair and crossed his arms. "Well, I know what it's like to have to go to some boring grownups' party every single night, and wear scratchy dress robes and a stupid hairstyle and make small talk with Important People and never even see another kid the entire holiday, because there's no time for it, what with all the Important Things going on. At least you have cousins to hang out with when you go home."

"Cousins who on multiple occasions have threatened to have me killed."

"Eh, that just makes things more exciting."

That surprised a grudging laugh out of Sirius. "So you're going home, then?" he asked.

"Nope." James couldn't help but grin. "Talked the parents into letting me stay. I figure it'll be a million times more fun to be at Hogwarts. Imagine: three weeks of no classes, just time to explore. Best Christmas ever."

Remus saw Peter's head shoot up, and had a suspicion there might be one more name on Professor McGonagall's list the next time he looked.

– – – – –

"My aunt is ill!" Sirius crowed, careering into the dormitory and nearly knocking over Ben Davies, who was trying to make everything he wanted to take home for the holidays fit into his overflowing trunk.

Sirius had addressed his announcement to the room at large, but it was James, lounging on his bed and surveying those lesser mortals who had to pack, who answered. "I know you don't like your family and all, but should you be this excited when bad things happen to them?"

Sirius stalled in the middle of the room in mid-stride, seeming to remember that no one here was actually a friend he could share his excitement with. "The family holiday party is off, so I get to stay at Hogwarts," he said, far more subdued.

James seemed to struggle with himself, then said in a neutral tone, "That's nice. I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun. Pete here is staying too, it turns out. And Remus."

Ben, who'd been talking for weeks about how much he couldn't wait to go home, straightened up from his trunk, looking a little wistful. "Hogwarts with no classes must be the best," he said.

James just looked smug, as if he'd thought up the very concept of Christmas break himself.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

Only four of them in the dormitory over the holidays meant there was less of a buffer between James and Sirius, but they surprised everyone by managing more or less to get along.

The four of them played Gobstones a couple times with a brand new set Peter had got as an early Christmas present, or James and Peter chatted about Quidditch in front of the fire, or James and Sirius argued over what was and was not an appropriate name for a post owl, while Remus sat nearby and read ahead to the parts of their classes he knew he'd be too tired to focus on after the upcoming term's full moons.

A holiday away from home seemed to put Sirius in a very good mood, and he shared more about his family in the first few days of break than Remus had heard him say all term, generally tossed out in small anecdotes he didn't even seem to realise might strike others as bizarre.

"My cousin Bella used to take her sister Cissy and swing her round upside down by her heels," Sirius was telling Peter at breakfast the day before Christmas, after Peter had told a completely unrelated story about some of his own cousins. "Especially at Christmas, because then all the sweets she was hiding in her dress would fall out and she'd get in trouble with their mum for stealing like a commoner."

"Didn't _Bella_ ever get in trouble for abusing her sister?" Remus put in from two seats down, his impetuous mouth getting the better of him as usual.

"Nah," Sirius shrugged. "Her parents think she's so clever, they never complain about anything she does."

"That explains so much," James muttered.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that, you know, your cousin's a bit of a sociopath, isn't she?"

"Hey. No, she's not."

"You said she's always threatening to kill you."

"Yeah, but still."

"Still what?"

"She's still family."

James rolled his eyes. "Oh, well. Okay then." He shoved his bench back from the table. "I'm gonna go ask Madam Hooch if I can take out one of the school brooms for a bit. Pete, wanna come?"

Peter hurried to follow James out of the Great Hall, leaving Sirius and Remus in awkward silence.

James was thwarted, though, by Madam Hooch's strict policy against lending school brooms outside of flying lessons or Quidditch practices, even during the holidays. "You just wait till I'm allowed to bring my own broom," James could be heard to mutter as he stomped back into the castle, Peter still trailing at his heels.

Instead, by afternoon James had managed to instigate an all-out, inter-house snowball battle on the lawn among the first and second-years, and even Remus found himself roped in.

"Merlin's beard, you've got a good arm!" James gasped, after Remus landed yet another snowball directly between James' shoulder blades. "You wouldn't think it, since you look so weedy." And James scampered off again to harry the small contingent of Ravenclaws before Remus could work out whether to be flattered or insulted.

Christmas morning, Remus woke to find a small pile of presents at the foot of his bed. He was mostly able to block out the others' squeals of glee in tearing through their much larger piles, as he opened his own gifts slowly, folding the wrapping paper carefully and setting it aside.

There had never been much money, though Remus got the sense things hadn't been quite so tight before managing Remus' condition became his parents' primary activity, and that sense was only strengthened by his parents' insistence that there was not even a grain of truth to the idea. But his family had always been creative about gift-giving.

There were thoughtfully selected books, used but not overly worn, that Remus could already tell would become new favourites, and warm woollen things his mother had knitted herself. Also, he saw with a twinge of guilt, a full set of refills for his potions kit, which probably had been expensive.

James groaned with envy when he saw Peter's new flying cape, while Sirius eyed James' glossy picture encyclopaedia of every Quidditch match ever played. For all Sirius moaned about his parents, they certainly hadn't forgotten him at Christmastime, though their presents – a stunningly expensive set of dress robes, a silver chalice embossed with an ornate letter "B" – were not really things a 12-year-old boy could enjoy.

Christmas dinner was the best meal Remus had had at Hogwarts yet, and that was saying something. All the students who had stayed for the break got to pull as many crackers as they liked, and somehow Dumbledore convinced the staff table to sing along on a round of carols. Remus hadn't even realised Christmas didn't have to be a stressful time of treading carefully around others' strained nerves.

After they'd all eaten as much as they could hold, he watched the other three boys from his dormitory push back their benches and stand up, still laughing over something Peter had said.

Maybe it was good enough, Remus thought, to have people around you who perhaps didn't actually like you, but at least didn't actively dislike you. And there was something to be said for people who didn't care about you, but also didn't hover in constant worry. That was probably enough to be grateful for.

James paused on his way to the door out of the Great Hall, looking back with his brow furrowed. "Remus? Are you coming?"

Remus almost choked on his last bite of chocolate gateau and stumbled after James.

– – – – –

The next morning, James was nowhere to be seen, and it occurred to Remus that this had been happening a lot. Sirius and Peter could generally be found somewhere between the common room, the Great Hall and the kitchens, but James sometimes just vanished into thin air.

Remus was reading behind the curtains of his bed that evening, when he heard James burst into the dormitory and shout, "Guess what I found!" Then James stopped abruptly, and Remus knew he'd found himself addressing Sirius and Sirius alone.

"What did you find?" came Sirius' voice.

"Uh...nothing. Thought it looked like it might be the opening to some kind of passageway, but it's probably nothing."

Peter's voice joined in from the vicinity of the door. "You found a secret passageway? Really? Where does it go? Will you show us?"

James hesitated, but the urge to show off was clearly gaining the upper hand over his usual reserve toward Sirius. "Uh-huh. You know that creepy statue of a one-eyed witch? There's this kind of crack in the wall behind it that looks like it could be something, but I can't figure out how to get it open."

"Cool," Peter breathed.

"Cool," Sirius admitted.

"You can come along with me, if you want," James offered. "I'm going to have another go at it, see if maybe there's a secret password or a certain spell you have to say."

"When can we go?" Peter wanted to know. "Tonight?"

"Sure," James said.

Remus popped his head out between his curtains to remind them, "You can't go at night, there's curfew. You'll get caught."

Three surprised faces turned his way.

Sirius spoke first. "Has it really taken you an entire term to figure out that nobody else cares about curfew?"

"Doesn't matter," James said, "We can still go at night, 'cause I've got –" But then he stopped. "You know what, maybe that's a better idea. If we go tomorrow afternoon, we don't have to worry about getting caught, so we can take all the time we need. There's no rule that says students can't hang out in a corridor if they feel like it."

Sirius gave him a quizzical look. "Because you've got – what?"

Remus too had the sense James had been about to reveal something, but then thought better of it.

"I've got loads of experience in stealth and going round at night without being heard, but I don't know how well you lot'll do," James answered smoothly. "Remus is right, I'll show you all tomorrow. Then maybe Remus will even come with us. What do you say?"

It took Remus a moment to realise James was talking to him. "Oh, yes, okay," he said.

"Great," Sirius grumbled. "Mention something like that and then leave us hanging. What are we supposed to do now?"

James gave them all an impish smile. "Did I forget to mention that the elves brought up a tray of treacle tart from the kitchens for all of Gryffindor tower? Because their very favourite Gryffindor asked them to?"

Remus was surprised no one got injured in the mad three-way dash that ensued through the dormitory door.

– – – – –

The next afternoon, Remus trailed along cautiously behind James and Sirius and Peter. No, there was no rule that students couldn't spend time in one of Hogwarts' many corridors, especially during a school break, but it still seemed uncomfortably close to rule-breaking. Surely first-years weren't allowed to find secret passageways?

"Here," James said, after he'd led them down a third-floor corridor to the statue in question. "See what I mean? There's that kind of line down the stones that doesn't look quite like it's part of the wall, but I can't get it to open." He tapped his wand against the wall and muttered a series of spells, _Alohomora_ and _Aperio_ and a couple others Remus suspected he had made up just for show.

"Try tapping on the statue," Sirius suggested. "It looks kind of off-kilter, so maybe it can move."

Sirius repeated James' spells while tapping the witch on her head and humped back and even on the face. Peter, too, gave it a few cautious tries.

Remus, meanwhile, was flipping through the book he'd brought along. Sirius was the one who first turned and noticed. "What are you _doing_?" he asked.

"Well, we're looking for a charm, aren't we?" Remus asked, holding up his copy of their Charms textbook. "How about this: _Dissendium_." He tapped the witch's hump, which sprang open and revealed a passageway behind it.

Peter stared down the dark passageway. James and Sirius goggled at Remus, who explained, "I was just thinking about the verb _dissocio_, which means 'to part'."

"Not bad, mate," James said, finally.

Sirius was already pushing ahead, peering into the passageway, which seemed to descend steeply behind the statue. "You lot ready to explore?" he asked.

Peter nodded uncertainly.

"I'll lead," James said, managing to insert himself between Sirius and the opening.

That was how they went, with James first, Sirius hot on his heels, Peter shadowing Sirius, and Remus bringing up the rear, glancing frequently over his shoulder.

The passageway finally dead-ended at a trapdoor. James glanced back at them, then pushed it open and they all climbed through to what appeared to be the cellar of a shop.

"Where are we?" James breathed.

"Must be Hogsmeade," Sirius said.

"Yeah, obviously," James replied. "But where in Hogsmeade?"

"Honeydukes," Peter answered.

Sirius and James spun around to face him. "And you know how?" Sirius asked.

Peter pointed to the crates of goods that surrounded them. "Pepper Imps? Toothflossing Stringmints? Those are Honeydukes products. And they have a branch in Hogsmeade, my parents took me there once."

"Free sweets!" Sirius declared. "As much as we can carry!"

"No," Remus said. "You can't just nick stuff from here."

"No," James said, almost simultaneously. "What are you going to tell people when they ask where you got it all from? It's a _secret_ passageway, remember?"

"Maybe just a few?" Peter asked.

James wavered. "Okay, a few. Just a pocketful."

"And leave money to pay for them!" Remus yelped.

"Yeah, yeah," James said, but Remus saw him drop a few coins on the floor, while Sirius and Peter ran around the cellar, laughing in delight and filling their pockets.

"Keep quiet," Remus mumbled, but no one listened to him.

"Come on," James said finally. "D'you want to see anything else or do you just want to stuff your faces?"

"Just stuff our faces, I think," Peter laughed.

James rolled his eyes. "I bet we can get upstairs from here, and into the village. We'll be the only first-years to go to Hogsmeade!"

"Except for all of us first-years who've been here before with our families," Sirius smirked. "Sheltered childhood, huh, James?"

"Shut up," James said. "And anyway, I bet my parents –"

"Actually –" Sirius began.

"Shh!" Peter interrupted them both. "Is that someone upstairs?"

They all froze at what sounded very much like footsteps above.

"More exploring next time!" James decreed and rushed them back through the trapdoor, pulling it shut behind them.

He took off down the passageway at a run. The rest of them followed, and they didn't stop running for a good five or ten minutes. James finally slowed, then leant against the tunnel wall, panting. "Brilliant, huh?" he asked. "Our own secret passageway into Hogsmeade. You all have to swear you won't tell anyone else, okay?"

Peter and Sirius nodded. James turned to Remus, who hesitantly nodded too.

James grinned, satisfied. Then he shouted, "Last one back is a rotten Doxy's egg!" and tore off again towards the castle.

Sirius roared and gave chase, while Peter and Remus jogged along more slowly after them.

"This is great, huh, Remus?" Peter asked, eyes shining in the glow of their lit wands.

Remus wasn't sure what to say.

– – – – –

James still disappeared on his own sometimes, but more often now, he took Peter along when he went exploring, or sometimes even Sirius. All three of them seemed to be born magnets for trouble, and in the weeks of the Christmas holidays, it seemed they were forever just barely slipping away before getting caught somewhere they weren't supposed to be. Remus was seriously going to develop bad posture just from all the times he had to bend his head over a book or his breakfast, pretending not to see what they others were up to.

All the while, Remus' internal monologue seemed to be stuck on repeat: _Tell on them before they get themselves in serious trouble. Don't tell, they'll hate me for it. Doesn't matter, it's not like I'm ever going to be friends with them. _

_But I want to have friends. _

_No, you don't._

James and Sirius, meanwhile, seemed to be stuck on a repeat cycle of their own, where they would manage to get on for a few days at a stretch, then begin to bicker again.

One afternoon near the end of Christmas break, Sirius came into the dorm wearing an enormous grin and dropped an armful of sweets onto his bed, tossing a few Chocolate Frogs at the rest of them.

"Is that – You can't –" James spluttered. "You can't just go down there without telling me!"

"Are you serious? I can't go down a passageway without telling you? It's not like you own it."

"But I found it! And we figured it out all together! You can't just go using it for your – your –personal gain."

"For the love of all the sidhe of Ireland," Sirius grumbled. "If I'd known you were going to be a baby about it, I'd have found my own secret passageway. There must be dozens of them around here. Actually, that's what I'll do, I'll just go find one of my own."

James spluttered some more, but before he got an answer out, Remus simply put a pillow over his head and went back to his book. He'd heard it all ten times before.

When term started and the others came back, James seemed relieved. He went back to spending time with Alvin and Tristan, often trailing Peter in his wake, or joined Ben and his Ravenclaw mates.

The main difference was that, while Peter still had a strong tendency to follow James around when he had the opportunity, now whenever he didn't, Sirius claimed him. Remus didn't even notice it at first, but one day that spring he looked up and realised how often he saw Sirius and Peter sitting together at meals, in class or even in the library, where Sirius, like James, never condescended to actually revise, but if pressed, would sometimes help Peter. In between bouts of taking the mickey out of him, of course.

Remus supposed Sirius and Peter had more in common than anyone had seen at first, both of them from privileged, pureblood backgrounds, though Peter's parents certainly didn't command the wealth and status Sirius' did.

And where Sirius' friendships with James and Remus in later years were more complex – he and James both antagonising and defending one another like brothers, and Sirius' attitude toward Remus so often torn between protectiveness and exasperation – Sirius and Peter's friendship remained the uncomplicated thing it was in those first few months, the rebel and the sidekick, neither needing to make it be something more.

Remus, though, with his astute eye for recognising the needs of everyone but himself, saw pieces missing.

James was a natural leader who could have found friends and followers inside a cast iron cauldron. But Remus thought he had more fun when he let Sirius in, because Sirius was his equal.

Sirius, with his prickly pride, needed someone who could challenge but balance him. As much as he could still sometimes be heard to mutter half-hearted imprecations about James' general uselessness, Remus was sure Sirius missed the camaraderie they'd shared during the strange, friendly thaw that had been Christmas.

Peter, it turned out, came more and more out of his shell the more time he spent with Sirius, but Remus could tell he missed the security of being part of a group.

There was less mischief in Gryffindor Tower during the term, but also a little less fun. And gradually the quietest member of the first-year boys' dormitory, quite to his own surprise, started to wonder if it might not be worth a little more trouble for a little more laughter.


	5. Chapter 5

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Popping in with a comment here because a couple of people left reviews complimenting how I've portrayed Peter, so first of all THANK YOU, and second of all, if you're interested, I can point you to a couple authors who've done impressive and/or unexpected things with Peter. Here are the two that spring to mind:

"The Years of the Rat" by **kaydeefalls**, my original inspiration for this story in a roundabout way. Shows Peter over the years as conniving yet believable. It doesn't seem to be possible to post links here, but you should be able to find this by googling "The Years of the Rat" and "kaydeefalls."

Then, **rosemaryandrue** does something far more unexpected, and has Peter as an early and stalwart member of the Order, with only hints that personal tragedy is later going to twist him, in "Winter of Discontent," part of her Rising Storm Universe. You should be able to find her work by searching for "rosemaryandrue" on Livejournal.

– – – – –

CHAPTER FIVE

"So what d'you think? Why did the Sorting Hat put you in Gryffindor?" Peter asked Sirius one evening in the common room.

Remus, still shivery and weak after a full moon the night before, was curled up nearby in an armchair with a blanket and his Potions textbook, and the usual feeling that no one quite saw him.

Sirius and Peter had managed to score the seats closest to the fireplace, though this stroke of luck was mostly thanks to the fact that the upper years hadn't yet returned from a Hogsmeade visit.

Sirius was poking lazily at the logs behind the grate, using his wand to levitate the poker. He looked bored and only shrugged in response to Peter's question.

"I mean…" Peter continued. "Everybody thinks I should have been in Hufflepuff. They say it all the time. And my whole family _were_ in Hufflepuff. The ones who weren't in Slytherin, at least."

Sirius looked up at that. "You had family in Slytherin?"

"It doesn't have to be a _bad_ thing," Peter countered. "I'd rather be in Slytherin than Hufflepuff. It just means you're clever and you know what you want. And Hufflepuff, well, that means you're…dull."

Sirius actually seemed to consider that. "I s'pose so."

"But I don't know why Gryffindor," Peter sighed. "I'm not brave. I'm never gonna be a hero or something. And that's the main Gryffindor thing, isn't it."

"Ah, you'll surprise us yet," Sirius replied. It was an offhand comment, but Peter seemed mollified.

"What about you?" Peter pressed. "You must wonder why you ended up in a different House from all your family."

Sirius scowled. Remus knew he'd had another run-in with his family – in the person of Lucius Malfoy, who was not yet married into the Black clan but as good as – just the week previous, which had left him with a black eye and a tendency to lash out at anyone who so much as tried to talk to him for the next few days.

"Because I'm not an ugly git," Sirius retorted now.

Peter chuckled. "Is that what the Hat said to you?"

"Nah, it said there was 'greatness ahead of me on either side' or something like that."

Peter turned to look at Sirius. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. I thought it did that creepy prophetic thing with everybody. Why, what did it say to you?"

"Just that I would have the chance to 'choose courage later' or something. Dunno how you're supposed to choose courage. Even Professor Sprout scares me." Peter sighed and slumped down further in his armchair.

"Hey," Sirius said. "Pete. If you're in Gryffindor, it's 'cause you really are a Gryffindor. I reckon the Hat doesn't make mistakes, after it's been doing this for a thousand years or whatever."

Remus shifted in his seat, accidentally rustling his book loudly enough that the other two boys noticed him. He froze under the weight of their combined stares.

"Remus," Sirius said, faintly surprised.

"What about you?" Peter asked. "I bet everyone thinks you should've been in Ravenclaw, don't they? Since you're so book-smart?"

Remus shrugged, embarrassed. "I don't know."

"What did the Hat say to you?" Peter wanted to know.

"I don't remember."

"Come on, you must remember."

What Remus remembered was the Hat suggesting that someone with his condition would do well to be surrounded by courageous friends. And he wasn't about to share _that._ "I think it said something about growing…into Gryffindor…with time," he improvised.

"Ooh, that's like mine!" Peter said. "Maybe that's true. I mean, it must be sort of able to tell what we'll be like in the future, right? Not just what we're like now?" He sounded like he very much hoped this was true.

The portrait hole opened then and James came tumbling in, laughing, flanked by Tristan and Alvin and a couple of second-years. The three boys by the fireplace watched James and his entourage make their way through the room, still laughing, and up the stairs toward the dormitories.

"And some people are just Gryffindor because…they're Gryffindor. You know?" Peter put in, gazing after James.

"Yeah, if it's only about showing off," Sirius grumbled. But he, too, looked a little longing.

"Some people have it so easy," Remus murmured.

He hadn't actually meant to say that out loud.

– – – – –

Remus woke to the sound of someone thrashing about. He fumbled for his wand and muttered, "Lumos," just in time to see a shape topple out of bed, tangled in the sheets. Remus pushed himself up to a sitting position, blinking in the half-dark. "Sirius?"

"It's nothing," Sirius growled from the floor.

"Are you okay?"

"It's nothing," Sirius insisted, in a tone that brooked no disagreement. Remus politely pretended not to hear as Sirius put his bed back together, still breathing heavily.

The next night, as they were all getting ready for bed, Sirius found a small sachet of herbs on his pillow. He sniffed it suspiciously. "What's this?"

From his own bed on the other side of the room, James shrugged with studied nonchalance. "Wolfsbane, nicked it from the Potions storeroom. It's supposed to keep away bad dreams and stuff like that."

Sirius' expression cycled through embarrassed to angry to grudgingly pleased and back again. "Thanks," he said shortly and tossed the thing aside. But just before they turned the lights out, Remus saw him slip it under his pillow.

Remus, who had understandably mixed feelings about Wolfsbane, managed to keep from sneezing for Sirius' sake.

– – – – –

"Have a biscuit, Mr Lupin."

Professor McGonagall was fixing him with that stern stare she must have perfected over uncountable decades of teaching.

Remus squirmed, unsure whether he could actually stomach a biscuit right now. He had no idea why he was sitting in the Transfiguration teacher's office. Either he'd unwittingly got himself into trouble, or this had something to do with his condition. Remus supposed he was hoping for the former by default.

"How are you getting on?" McGonagall asked, still sitting ramrod straight and steepling her fingers in a way reminiscent of Professor Dumbledore.

Remus blinked. "…Ma'am?"

"Your classes, your fellow students in Gryffindor. How are you getting on with it all?"

"Fine, ma'am."

"No difficulties concerning your medical condition?"

"No, ma'am. Madam Pomfrey looks after me very well."

"I'm glad to hear it. And what about friends?"

"Friends?" Remus asked, then remembered to add, "Professor?"

"Have you made friends with other students in your year? In your House?"

"I get on fine with most of them, ma'am," Remus mumbled, not wanting to lie but loathe to disappoint his Head of House with the full truth.

He could tell she saw through him. "I can understand the impulse toward isolating yourself, Mr Lupin, given your condition, but it really isn't necessary. Surely you could spend a bit more time getting to know the others in your year. Perhaps join a club or society. I know you've offered homework help to others on occasion – that might be an opportunity to forge some connections."

Remus felt his face grow hot. So Professor McGonagall had called him into her office simply because she'd noticed that, more than halfway through the second term, Remus still hadn't made any proper friends. What a loser she must think he was. But then again, she didn't understand.

"Yes, ma'am, I suppose so," he said, not supposing so at all. "I can try to talk to the others a bit more."

"That's all I ask, Remus." She surveyed him for a moment more, taking in his slight frame and hand-me-down robes. "And do have a biscuit."

Walking back to Gryffindor Tower, Remus felt himself caught up in a familiar bit of fancy. He wouldn't mind staying unhappy, he thought, if only he could extract a promise somehow, from some powers that be, that others would be happy in exchange. He wouldn't mind making that sacrifice, if someone else could benefit from it. Why didn't the world work that way?

Remus left dinner early that evening, still lost in similar thoughts, to start his homework before the common room grew noisy and crowded. But when he stepped into the Entrance Hall, he saw Sirius surrounded by an ugly knot of Slytherins. Arnold Nott, another first-year and cousin to the terrible Teresa, had his wand right up under Sirius' nose.

"Get – out – of my _face_, Nott," Sirius growled.

"Or you'll do what?" Arnold sneered. "Call your little Gryffindor pals for help? Oh wait, I forgot, you haven't got any."

"I have so."

"Oh, who, stupid Pettigrew? Who blushes every time a teacher calls on him? I'm terrified, Black, I am."

"_Don't_ insult Peter." Sirius lunged at Arnold, but another of the boys grabbed his arms.

Remus was just about to turn back to the Great Hall for help when Professor Flitwick came barrelling through the door.

"Stop that, boys!" he squeaked, and had the lot of them Disarmed before they'd even turned around. "Roughhousing in the Entrance Hall, really. I'll be having a word with your Heads of House." He passed the wands back one by one, deducting five points from each of the boys in the hall as he went. From each of the boys except Remus, that is, since Flitwick didn't even seem to have noticed passing him in the doorway.

Remus watched the Slytherins slink off in one direction and Sirius slump away in another, looking silently enraged that he'd had to be rescued, and by a teacher no less.

And an idea that had been slowly coalescing in the back of Remus' mind made itself ever more insistently known.

– – – – –

"Hey, I know you're planning something about those Slytherins," Remus told Sirius when he managed to catch the other boy alone in a corridor between classes. It wasn't that hard to do, actually, since Sirius had been brooding more after his latest run-in, taking off on his own after classes and meals. It wasn't hard for Remus to slip after him and then look like he just happened to be passing by.

Before Sirius could interrupt, Remus continued, "And believe me, I _don't_ want to know what it is. But have you thought about taking Peter with you? He's so good at getting in places, at not being noticed." It took one to know one, and Remus had often admired this trait in Peter. A little recklessly, he extemporised, "I bet you could even sit him down right in the middle of the Slytherin common room and no one would see him if he didn't want to be seen."

That was surely overdoing it, Remus thought, but Sirius looked duly impressed at the idea. Remus gave a friendly nod and continued off down the hall, before Sirius could start to wonder why exactly they'd just had that conversation.

– – – – –

"You know Sirius is going to do something to those boys in Slytherin, don't you?" Remus mentioned to James.

It had taken a lot of courage to approach the ever cool James Potter unbidden, but this was all part of the Plan, so Remus had trailed along to where James, with a distinctly longing expression, was watching the Gryffindor Quidditch team practise in the slanting evening light.

The weather was warm and a number of other younger students were scattered in the stands to watch, so it wasn't hard for Remus to drift through the crowd and end up near James.

"I know you don't trust him much," he continued, "but you might not want to leave him to his own devices. Especially since he's planning to take Peter along, and he's bound to get them both into trouble."

James cocked an eyebrow at him, probably about to ask why Remus cared, but just then one of the third-year Chasers lost control of her broom and came careering straight toward the stands. In the ensuing kerfuffle, Remus managed to disappear again.

– – – – –

Peter was the easiest to track down, since they still occasionally met in the library to do homework or revise for tests.

"I wonder why you don't hang out with James more," Remus tossed off over their Transfiguration books. Though he'd never quite got the hang of the homework planner, Peter did now bring the right textbooks to the right classes. "I mean, I know he likes you."

This was stretching it a bit, since Remus wasn't sure James ever really paid enough attention to Peter to feel one way or another about him – but James didn't actively _dis_like Peter, so that seemed close enough. And it was gratifying to see Peter's eyes go wide with surprise.

"I'm sure he'd say yes if you asked him to join you doing something," Remus added, just in case the message hadn't got through clearly enough.

– – – – –

Remus couldn't believe it could be so simple – _People are so terribly easy to manipulate, _he thought a little sadly, and wondered if maybe he should have been in Slytherin instead – but within a day, he saw James and Peter in whispered conversation on one of the common room sofas, casting covert glances in Sirius' direction.

Another couple days and it was all three of them – Sirius and James and Peter – whispering and laughing at a table in the corner of the room. They looked, Remus thought, like a real group of mates.

Remus didn't mind, because he himself wasn't looking for mates.

– – – – –

Remus woke one night to the sound of whispering and raised an eye above the covers just in time to glimpse something silvery disappearing around the doorway. A glance around the room told him James and Sirius and Peter were all missing from their beds. He heard them creep back in, hours later, still giggling over whatever discoveries they had made.

The three of them together created such a magnetic pull, Remus sometimes thought if he could somehow record all his footsteps over the course of a day, they would reveal a strange sort of orbit, endlessly tugged between a desire to see what James and Peter and Sirius were up to and guilty reminders to himself to stay away.

The next evening, with his homework completed aggravatingly early and nothing to do, Remus looked around the common room. There was a riotous game of Gobstones going on in one corner and a few anxious seventh-years already revising in another. Remus saw Ben Davies watching two fourth-years play chess and told himself he ought to go join him. But instead, he sidled over to Sirius and James and Peter, who had their heads all bent together, off to one side of the fireplace.

"Hey," Remus said, stopping a few feet away from their table. "What are you doing?"

The other boys looked up warily.

"Nothing," James said.

"Yes, nothing," Sirius agreed.

"Is it a type of nothing that will get you into trouble with Professor McGonagall?" Remus pressed, somehow unable to stop himself.

"No!" Peter said, too quickly. 

"…Because we're too good to get caught," James admitted.

"How can you be so sure?" Remus asked.

"Because I have…a special way of not being seen."

Sirius snorted. "Oh, yeah, make yourself sound super mysterious."

"And now we'd like to get back to what we were doing," James concluded. It wasn't rude, the way he said it, but it definitely was dismissive.

"Don't let me stop you," Remus replied, but some contrary impulse made him drop down into a nearby armchair, instead of simply going away.

Sirius cast him a dubious glance, but the others resumed their conversation.

"The problem is still the password," Peter said.

"Think we could trick their entranceway into letting us in?" Sirius wondered.

"No," James determined.

"Think we could trick one of them into telling us?"

"No."

"Think we could trick someone, maybe Peter, into tricking –"

"Hey!"

"Hmph," Sirius grunted. "Maybe if we hexed Snape?"

"We could do that anyway," James suggested.

Sirius grinned. "I like the way you think."

"So you're planning to sneak in the Slytherin common room," Remus deduced.

"Er," said Peter.

"No," said Sirius.

"Yes," said James.

There was a silent but expressive exchange of glances between Sirius and James.

"Oh, come on," James said. "He's not stupid. And it's not like he's going to tell on us. _Right_, Remus?"

Later, Remus would reflect on how best to classify this moment: temporary lapse of judgement, or first step on a slippery slope? "Right," he agreed.

"So, then," James declared and turned back to the others, already forgetting Remus.

Remus opened his Charms textbook. No reason not to reread this week's chapter. Again.

James and Sirius and Peter continued to bandy about suggestions, each more ridiculous than the last, and Remus sighed despite himself.

"What?" Sirius sounded testy.

Remus looked up from his textbook. "Nothing."

"You have a better idea?"

"I was just thinking that it wouldn't be all that difficult, really. If one wanted to get the password for the Slytherin common room, that is, which I certainly don't."

"Well, stay out of it then."

"Fine."

Sirius turned back to the others. "If we could somehow stick ourselves to the ceiling…"

Remus couldn't help it, he snorted at the thought.

"Look, it's not easy, okay!" Sirius snapped.

"It is," Remus replied, closing his Charms book on his finger to keep his place. "All you need is to overhear a Slytherin saying the password, right?" 

"But we can't just stand round the entrance," James pointed out. "They'd report us to Slughorn. Or just pound us themselves."

"I thought you had a special way of not being seen?"

James rolled his eyes. "It doesn't make me non-corporeal. Have you seen that corridor? It's so narrow, anyone who passed by would bump into you."

Remus tried to hide his mounting glee at being a step ahead of James for once. "Of course I've seen the corridor. So what I'm thinking about is that statue of the three goblins just down from the Slytherin entrance, kind of set back into the wall."

"Too far away," James said. "If you hid behind there, you wouldn't be able to hear anything anyone said at the door."

"Well," Remus said. "Not unless you used a unidirectional Proculauditory Charm. Although I suppose you might want to add a mild Resonance Charm to the wood, too, just in case they tend to speak directly into the door when they give the password."

The others were suddenly looking at Remus as if he had grown a second head.

"Really?" he asked them. "You never read ahead to the material we haven't covered yet in class? It's all in here." Remus tapped the Charms book in his hand.

"Are you… Why, exactly, aren't you in Ravenclaw?" James asked weakly.

"Teach it to us," Sirius demanded. "The…whatever it is you said."

"The Proculauditory Charm," Remus said. "For distance hearing."

The other three nodded in tandem.

Remus fetched his wand from where he'd it tucked into another textbook for safekeeping, then took a deep breath and pointed it at the fourth-years who were playing chess across the room. This was one of very many charms he'd learned in theory, but never actually performed. He extended his wand straight forward and murmured, "Proculauditorus unidirectionalis." Instantly, they could hear the fourth-years' conversation as if they were sitting next to them.

"Finite incantatem," Remus said and privately felt very pleased with himself.

The others stared at him.

"Where did you learn that?" Peter wanted to know.

"I didn't, really. I just read about it in the Charms book when I was preparing for school over the summer."

"Okay," Sirius said. "Teach us."

Remus squared his shoulders, wondering if he was creating a monster, and why he didn't seem to feel as concerned at the prospect as he probably should. "The charm is 'Proculauditorus,' but you want to make sure to do it in only one direction, because otherwise they'll be able to hear everything you say too. So that's 'unidirectionalis.' It doesn't work through wood or even through cloth, and you want to make sure to end the spell as soon as you don't need it anymore, because it can start going haywire if you leave it too long. The wand motion is kind of a forward jab."

James picked up his wand, eager to try. "It's 'Proculauditorus unidirectionalis'?" Remus nodded and James gave his wand a few experimental swings and jabs, before pointing it directly at the chess players and uttering the spell.

"No, not the ROOK!" one of the fourth-years yelled directly in their ears. James started back, dropping his wand, and Sirius gave a bark of laughter. Remus quelled a tiny bit of disappointment that James performed the spell just as well as he himself had.

"My turn!" Sirius declared.

Remus shook his head. "Let James end his first. Remember, it's important to remove the spell as soon as you're done with it."

"Yes, professor," Sirius grumbled, but James picked up his wand from the floor and pronounced, "Finite incantatem."

Sirius performed the spell next and did just as well, then Peter did it too.

"Brilliant," Sirius breathed, once they'd each removed the charm again under Remus' careful watch. "Are we ready to go?"

James nodded and jumped up. "I'll just get the – you know."

Remus had almost managed to forget about this part of their plan. "You're going now?"

Sirius grinned a little wolfishly. "No time like the present."

James turned to Remus. "Thanks, mate. By all rights you should be in Ravenclaw, but we're glad you're not." He turned toward the dormitory stairs to fetch whatever mystery item he had to fetch, then looked back at Remus again. "Besides, now you really can't rat on us." He flashed that dazzling grin and disappeared up the stairs.

– – – – –

Remus was at breakfast early the next morning, so he was privy to a rather unusual sight: underpants, strung up all along the walls of the Great Hall with Permanent Sticking Charms. Professors Flitwick, McGonagall and Slughorn had clearly been trying for some time to remove them, to no avail.

Looking a little closer, Remus saw that each item flashed periodically with bright yellow letters spelling out a name, presumably the name of the individual to which that particular pair of pants belonged.

Unable to suppress a certain fascination, Remus surveyed the room surreptitiously from a seat at the far end of the Gryffindor table. It was nicely done, he saw, and quite subtle. The names he could see were all from Slytherin, but it was an even mix, not just first-years, not even limited to Slytherins Sirius or James or Peter had personally had run-ins with – although he couldn't help noticing that Lucius Malfoy, Arnold Nott and Severus Snape all featured in the mix. But there was nothing that would necessarily draw a line of blame to any of the three boys Remus knew with absolute certainty to be behind the prank.

Also, those Sticking Charms were really rather impressive.

Remus found himself smiling, just a little bit, to think of the three of them sneaking through the castle together, bent on performing mischief of a highly Gryffindor kind.

Probably Peter really had been the one they'd sent in to procure the goods. James must have been the one to charm each item to light up with the relevant name. He was good at that sort of thing, charming objects to speak or bits of paper to display writing.

And Remus figured Sirius had done the Sticking Charms. He had a flair for them and had gone through a brief but memorable phase, a couple months back, of sticking everything to everything else, after they'd learned the charm in Flitwick's class. That had lasted until he stuck Chastity Macmillan's toad to the common room ceiling and no one was able to get it down for a week, which meant Chastity had to climb up on a stack of chairs when she wanted to feed him, and…well, there were other disadvantages to having a toad directly over one's head. After that, the rest of the House had managed to dissuade Sirius from carrying his Sticking hobby any further.

Yes, as Remus surveyed what was by far the most impressive bit of mischief carried out all school year, he couldn't help feeling a little bit amused, a little bit impressed, and – if the entire truth be told – a very tiny bit proud. This was clearly a meeting of great minds, and he'd been behind it.

Plus there was the added bonus of Lucius Malfoy glowering impotently from the front end of the Slytherin table, as Professor Slughorn attempted yet again to detach Malfoy's pants from the wall. Remus remembered Lucius threatening Sirius all those months ago at Hallowe'en, and insulting James, and he allowed himself one more tiny smile.

James, Sirius and Peter sauntered in to the Great Hall a few minutes later, tousle-haired and nonchalant, and made a very good show of their reaction to the yellow-flashing, permanent-sticking, wall-adorning Slytherin underpants, seeming amused and surprised, but without overdoing it.

All three settled down together on a bench and Sirius reached for the toast, nearly bumping Remus' fork out of his hand in the process. "And anyway," he was saying, "Bella always says, the best way to keep your opponent guessing –"

"Why do you always do that?" James interjected.

"Do what?"

"You always quote Bellatrix like she's some kind of – of – great sage or something. You don't even _like_ her."

Sirius blinked at James. "I don't quote Bellatrix."

"Yes, you do! You were doing it just now."

"No, I wasn't. I was just telling you something she used to say."

"That's the same thing!"

Sirius appealed to Peter. "It's not the same, is it, Pete?"

Peter tilted his head to the side, the way he did when faced with a thorny Transfiguration problem. "You do talk about her often," he acceded diplomatically. "But you probably don't mean to do it as much as you do."

"It's just a bit creepy," James put in. "It's like your body's left home, but your head hasn't, quite."

Sirius opened his mouth to retort, but Peter elbowed him quickly in the side. "McGonagall," he muttered, and sure enough, their Head of House had spotted the three most likely minds behind the prank and was headed straight toward them.

"Remember what we planned!" Sirius hissed urgently to Peter.

"'Course I do!" Peter rejoined.

They all dug into their breakfasts with an air of great innocence.

"Mr Pettigrew!" Professor McGonagall cried as she drew up to their part of the table. Going for the weakest link, Remus thought to himself, which didn't seem quite fair.

Peter turned, looking convincingly surprised. "Professor?"

"Do you know anything about this?" One severely raised eyebrow was all she needed to encompass the entirety of the hall.

"This, ma'am? No, I just got here."

"And where were you before breakfast?" McGonagall continued, undeterred.

"I got up early to finish my History of Magic homework in the common room."

"Can anyone confirm that?"

"Um, I think Ben Davies was there too. And Mary Macdonald. I was in the corner to the right of the fireplace."

Professor McGonagall stared at him a few moments longer, but Peter showed no sign of caving in. She turned to James. "Mr Potter?"

"Yes, Professor?"

"Where have you been for the last hour or two?"

"Asleep, Professor. I only just got up."

It was true, Remus realised. He'd noticed James, still fast asleep, when he'd passed the other boy's bed on the way out of the dormitory. How and when had they done it? In the middle of the night?

"And you, Mr Black?"

"I was sleeping, too, Professor. The others must have seen me, because they were all already gone when I woke up."

Professor McGonagall gave each of them in turn a long and searching look. Then she sighed and said, "Very well." She hesitated, on the verge of making a further comment, but in the end all she said was, "Hurry up, now. You don't want to be late to class."

The three boys waited a decorous interval, until Professor McGonagall was well out of earshot and engaged again in conversation with Professor Flitwick, then all three leant in closer of one accord. 

"Peter!" Sirius crowed. "Brilliant! 'No, ma'am. I just got here, ma'am.' We'll make a master sneak thief of you yet. Cool as an iron cauldron."

"Cool as an Ever-Extending Icicle," James agreed.

"As a Glacier Gardenia," Peter grinned.

"Secret low five," James whispered, and all three surreptitiously slapped hands beneath the tabletop.

And the professors didn't get the flashing pants off the walls until nearly dinnertime.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

The first time it happened was at breakfast a couple weeks later.

"I can't remember the password," announced a timid voice that nonetheless managed to boom across the Great Hall.

A startled silence fell as everyone looked for the source of the voice. When nothing further happened, the usual din of chatter rose up again, but Remus thought Professor McGonagall looked a little concerned. He saw her studying each of the long tables.

The next time it happened was the following morning in Potions class, which the Gryffindor first-years had together with Ravenclaw. They were all bent diligently over their cauldrons, when someone yelled, "No, I won't let you copy my notes! Leave me alone!" But no one in the room had spoken.

At his desk in the front of the classroom, Professor Slughorn's head snapped up. "Which one of you did that?"

The students looked back at him blankly.

"One of you cast some sort of voice-throwing charm," Slughorn insisted. "And just a word to the wise here, but that sort of magic is beyond your abilities to control at the moment. I suggest you leave that until you've covered it in class." He looked at them sternly. "And no more interruptions. Back to work!"

With a sinking feeling, Remus saw James and Sirius share the very smallest of covert glances. Of course.

By unspoken agreement, all four of them ducked off down a side corridor, while the rest of the Gryffindors headed out to the greenhouses for Herbology.

"You didn't undo the distance hearing spell when you finished, did you?" Remus accused them.

Sirius shrugged in a way that presumably indicated guilt and James turned on him. "I thought you said you did!"

"Maybe I thought I had, okay?"

"What does thinking have to do with it? Either you did or you didn't."

Sirius scowled. "Oh, what does it matter?"

"It matters because you lied to us!"

"I didn't lie! I…adjusted the truth. Based on what I thought was true."

James cast him a disdainful look. "We're supposed to be able to trust you."

"Well, I should be able to trust you too, not to start making wild, unfounded accusations at me! Back me up here, Pete."

Remus cleared his throat. "Um, could we get back to the business at hand?"

The others turned to him, perplexed.

"What business?" asked Sirius.

"This spell you cast that's going out of control."

Sirius shrugged. "It'll wear off with time."

"No, it _won't_. It only gets stronger with time. I did tell you that."

James shrugged too. "I'm sure Dumbledore'll sort it out. And it's not like anyone can trace it back to us."

Remus shook his head. "Actually, they can, because –"

"GET YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF ME, MACNAIR," someone hollered and all of them jumped. Even Sirius couldn't help looking around for the source of the voice.

"That's why," Remus said weakly, heart pounding. "Because the spell's still doing exactly what you told it to do, picking up sound from near the Slytherin common room door and projecting it to wherever you are. Sooner or later one of the professors is going to be able to narrow it down to you, because it only ever happens when you're there."

Remus was gratified, in a queasy sort of a way, to see Sirius' face pale ever so slightly.

"Oh, Crups," James mumbled, and Peter's eyes were wide.

"We have to undo the spell!" Sirius declared.

Remus rolled his eyes. "Yes, you do."

"_We_ do? You taught it to us, you have to help us undo it."

"I – wait – what?"

James nodded. "It's true, we'd better take him along."

"Tonight do you think?" Sirius asked.

"But I don't think all four of us will fit. You have to go, because you cast the actual spell. I'll go because it's my, you know. Sorry, Pete, you're out this time." 

"Fine with me," Peter said. "I've got no interest in getting caught there by Slughorn."

Sirius addressed James. "You're willing to have him see the – you know?"

"Well, we'll have to, won't we?"

Remus was so frustrated he actually stamped his foot. "Look, I'm not going to help you. The spell's got too strong for us now anyway. You'd be better off going to Professor Dumbledore and telling him what happened and what kind of spell it was, and asking him to fix it."

"And land in detention for a week?" James asked. "Nah, no thanks."

"Detention for all of us," Sirius hastened to point out. "And the ickle prefect-in-training wouldn't want that, would he?"

Remus glared. "Fine. Just this once."

To his surprise, the grin Sirius tossed him was without guile. "A midnight adventure! Excellent."

"You know what?" James pondered. "Maybe we should get to Herbology."

Remus, who had yet to be late to a class the entire year, even on mornings after a full moon, moaned and took off at a dead run, heavy schoolbag flapping awkwardly against his legs.

– – – – –

The secret something James was always running off to fetch from the dormitory turned out to be an Invisibility Cloak. It was a gorgeous thing, silvery and almost weightless, like holding onto water. Remus' breath caught when James let him touch it.

"Cool, huh?" James said. "It was my dad's, but he gave it to me when I started Hogwarts. Said I'd have more fun with it, and he's got other ways to be invisible." Remus' head spun at how nonchalantly James dangled this precious object from his hand.

"Stop bumping, Remus," Sirius growled more than once as they crept through the castle's silent corridors.

"It's hard to all fit under here," Remus protested.

"James and Peter and I manage it just fine."

"Yeah, well I bet you've had a lot more practise, haven't you?"

"Shut up, you lot," James hissed more than once as they made their way down to the dungeon. Sirius' elbows kept ending up in Remus' ribs, though it didn't seem to be deliberate.

Finally, they made it to the underground corridor where the Slytherins had their dormitories.

"We should hide behind the statue of the three goblins again, I think, just in case anyone does come along," James whispered. With some jostling and muttering, they managed it, with James up against a wall, Sirius crouching under one of the goblins' outstretched arms and Remus squashed in between them. Once they were settled, James continued, "Okay, so now we just try casting 'finite incantatem' until we're sure it's worked, right?"

"It takes a really powerful wizard to undo a spell that's been strengthening for this long," Remus reminded him, but he had a feeling the warning fell, as usual, on deaf ears.

"Eh, if we all cast the spell together, it'll be strong enough."

"But it has to be done by the person who cast the original spell –"

"And that was Sirius. But it can't hurt if we both do 'finite incantatem' together with him, right?"

"Besides," Sirius added, "if it doesn't work, then at least the professors are going to be finding out some very interesting things about what the Slytherins get up to when no one's round."

The backfiring charm had projected sound from the Slytherin corridor a few more times during the day – including once in the Great Hall and once in the Gryffindor common room – and each time the snippets of conversation it revealed were less than flattering. Remus figured the professors knew by now where the sound was coming from, and he was more than a little worried they might also have figured out where it was going _to_.

He sighed, already envisioning the hundred ways this could go wrong.

James and Sirius already had their wands out. James nudged Remus. "C'mon, you ready?"

Remus pulled out his wand too and the three of them aimed at the Slytherin door.

"On the count of three, okay?" James suggested. "And say it in a whisper, but, you know, a loud whisper. Ready? One, two, three."

"Finite incantatem," they all whispered, more or less in unison.

Sirius asked what was on all of their minds. "How do we know if it worked?"

Remus sighed, and the other two seemed to realise what he was going to say before he said it. "One of us has to go over there and say something."

"I'll do it," Sirius said.

Wordlessly, James shrugged himself and Remus out of the Cloak, and passed it to Sirius. "Be quick," James said.

Sirius disappeared under the Cloak and Remus heard a slight rustle as he walked away toward the Slytherin common room door. He reappeared in front of them a few moments later, looking confused, and wriggled back behind the statue with them.

James looked hopeful. "Did you say anything? If you did, we didn't hear it."

Sirius nodded. "It was weird, though. I could kind of hear my own voice coming back at me."

Remus groaned. "We're all idiots. _You_ cast the spell, of course _you_ have to be the one to stay here and see if you can hear anything. But obviously it didn't work anyway, if you could hear yourself."

James was all business. "Okay, so we do it again! And this time, let's say it three times in a row, getting louder each time. Because sometimes things in threes have extra power. So we're three people, and we'll say it three times."

Remus sighed, declined to comment on the merit of this suggestion, and raised his wand again with the other two.

"Finite incantatem, FINITE INCANTATEM,_ FINITE INCANTATEM_."

They looked at each other.

"I'll go test it," James said. He grabbed the Cloak and disappeared. A moment later, they heard his voice as if he were still beside them. "Welcome to the home of Severus Snape, greasiest first-year ever at Hogwarts. Please _don't_ knock, because you wouldn't want to meet him anyway."

A moment later, he was back, grinning. "Well?"

Remus shook his head. "Still heard you."

"Gargoyles," James complained, "Why is this thing so stubborn?"

Just then, they heard voices coming from the end of the corridor.

James' eyes widened as he slipped back behind the statue and hurried to drape the Cloak back over all three of them. Sirius leant out under the goblin's arm to take a quick peek, then ducked back too with a hiss of alarm. "Dumbledore and Slughorn," he announced.

Remus moaned.

"They're coming because of the spell!" James declared, eyes wide. "Sirius, fix it, _now_."

Equally wide-eyed, Sirius whipped out his wand and pointed it toward the Slytherin door. "Finite incantatem," he intoned with fierce concentration. He murmured something softly to himself, then raised his wand and cast the spell again. Then once again.

Professors Dumbledore and Slughorn had almost reached the spot where they hid and Sirius was still repeating the spell under his breath. James tugged at his arm, but Sirius only shook his head. "I've almost got it," he whispered.

Just as the professors passed by the goblin statue in a whoosh of robes, Sirius raised his arm a final time and whispered, very softly but with impressive force, "Finite incantatem."

Dumbledore and Slughorn, who had been chatting companionably as they walked, stopped in front of the Slytherin door. With a nod to Slughorn, Dumbledore waved his wand in gentle arcs, muttering an incantation too quietly for the boys to hear. After a moment, he gave a small shrug and Slughorn's broad eyebrows went up.

"How odd," the Potions professor commented. "Mind if I try?"

Dumbledore gave a gracious wave of his hand, and Slughorn stepped closer to the door, performing the same incantation Dumbledore had done. Remus held his breath, not daring to look at Sirius or James.

"How very odd," Slughorn repeated. "I'm really quite sure the spell was cast here. It's the only explanation."

Professor Dumbledore shrugged in that enigmatic way of his. "Perhaps the original caster has already been and removed the spell."

Slughorn furrowed his brow. "Possible. But that has to have been difficult by now. And as I told you, I witnessed the spell's effect while I was teaching the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw first-years. It has to have been one of them."

"Well," Dumbledore said, his entire beard seeming to crinkle into a smile. "The culprit appears to have slipped through your fingers this time, Horace." He raised his voice almost imperceptibly. "But perhaps next time, he or she will think twice about dabbling in spells a bit too difficult for the present." He clapped Professor Slughorn on the shoulder. "Come, come, it's not the end of the world. There will always be a few cunning, clever ones who don't make it into your House."

Remus could have sworn he saw a pout on Professor Slughorn's face. "Right you are, of course, Albus. Right you are."

Then the two professors turned and headed back the way they had come, their voices receding as they reached the end of the corridor and rounded the corner.

Remus let out a desperate sigh he hadn't even known he was holding. "Oh – my – Merlin," he gasped.

Next to him, Sirius chortled so loudly that Remus spun round to look at him, getting tangled in the folds of the Cloak still draped over his head. "We did it!" Sirius crowed in a stage whisper. "I did it, we did it, whatever, it worked!" He grinned at Remus. "Hey, mate, we're totally brilliant."

Remus felt a bubble of laughter rising in his own chest and suddenly, he was laughing and Sirius was laughing too, making no effort to be quiet. How fabulous it was to laugh helplessly together with this barking mad individual.

"C'mon, you dolts, save it till we're back in the tower!" James said, but he looked pleased too.

Remus still felt slightly hysterical as they bumped along through the corridors, nearly running in their eagerness to get back to Gryffindor Tower and out of the range of trouble. James swept the Invisibility Cloak off them outside the portrait hole, and they tumbled inside, took one look at each other and started laughing again.

"The look on Slughorn's face –!" Sirius said.

"Boy is he sorry he didn't get you in Slytherin!" James added. "Cunning and clever, Sirius, eh?"

"Yup, you know me," Sirius said. "Got those Slytherin characteristics to the core."

James turned to Remus. "Thanks for helping us," he said. "I know you didn't want to come."

Remus made himself look braver than he felt and said, "I couldn't leave you two to make a mess of it, could I?"

James looked startled for a moment, then snorted with laughter. Sirius said, "You know, Lupin, you're not half bad."

With a sharp twist in his stomach, Remus thought this might be what it felt like to have friends.

– – – – –

The next time he passed the three of them – James, Sirius and Peter – with their heads all bent over the same bit of parchment at a table in the common room, casting looks over their shoulders and clearly up to something again…well, it was just an hour or two away from the April full moon, so perhaps he was simply feeling everything more acutely…but the sight actually stopped Remus in his tracks. _Why? _he thought furiously. _Why can't that be me?_

Sirius looked up at him, but in the vague way he had when he didn't consider the object of his gaze all that important. It seemed to Remus that Sirius hadn't even looked at him properly again since what he'd come to think of as the Slytherin Door Incident. "'Smatter, Remus?" Sirius asked now. Then, when he didn't answer, "Kneazle got your tongue?"

"No – nothing –" Remus managed to choke out and made a dash for the dormitory stairs. He'd only come up to collect a few things to take along when he went to meet Madam Pomfrey, but he paused for a moment as he knelt to open his trunk, pressing his face against the cool sheets of his bed.

_Just a few more weeks, _Remus chanted to himself._ This moon, then one more, then back home. Just a few more weeks._

He could hear the others whispering together as he passed by again in the other direction, but he resolutely didn't look at them.

_Why not ME? _the traitorous voice repeated relentlessly inside his head, but Remus shook it off. The answer to that question was due to rise shortly from behind the hills east of Hogwarts. And now he'd better hurry or he'd be late to meet Madam Pomfrey.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's note: Final chapter! (Chapter 7 and epilogue posted here together.)

Thanks so much for reading, and thank you especially to everyone who left a review!

– – – – –

CHAPTER SEVEN

Remus awoke slowly, head pounding so terribly that the only thing he could really imagine doing was groaning in pain. In fact, he probably did groan, because when he looked to his left, he was embarrassed to see the person in the next bed looking at him.

The person in the next bed.

There was someone in the bed next to him in the hospital wing, gazing curiously at Remus. Madam Pomfrey had forgotten to pull curtains around his bed like she always did and now he was here, exposed, and someone was looking at him, probably seeing him scratched and bruised and battered, before Madam Pomfrey had Healed the worst of it away.

That someone was Peter Pettigrew.

Now Remus really did have reason to groan, but he refrained. In fact, he was pretty sure he was frozen with panic.

"Hey, Remus," Peter said. "What are you doing here?"

Remus opened and closed his mouth experimentally. This time, at least, he'd thought ahead of time of things he could say, excuses he could give. Now if only his vocal chords would cooperate. He felt his own hands and face surreptitiously. No gaping wounds. Maybe he really would get away with pleading normal illness.

"Felt a bit ill," he managed. "Madam Pomfrey let me stay the night." Then, because Peter seemed to expect some kind of continuing conversation, "You?"

"Well, James and I tried to sneak an exploding cauldron into the Potions classroom, before everyone else was awake." Remus noticed distractedly that Peter's face still lit up a little whenever he got to refer to James and himself in the same sentence. "We got caught though, and the cauldron, well, exploded." He looked pleased with himself. "Madam Pomfrey made me stay a few hours. Burns, you know." He shoved up his sleeves to show Remus his battle wounds.

Remus nodded, trying to look impressed and not just terrified.

Reluctantly, Peter rolled his sleeves back down and turned his attention back to Remus. "What did you say you had again?"

Thankfully, just then Madam Pomfrey came bustling up. "Well, Remus, feeling any better yet?" she asked briskly. "I daresay it's the flu, so I'll expect you to stay in bed at least the rest of today. Don't even think of going to your classes – I'll write a note to your Head of House. And drink this. It's what I used all winter during the flu season and perhaps you're just catching it a little later than the rest."

As she spoke, she pressed a goblet to his lips, but of course the liquid inside bore no more resemblance to a flu potion than Remus did to a normal schoolboy. It was the usual concoction meant to ease the after-effects of having had his entire body ripped apart and rearranged twice in less than twenty-four hours.

Remus drank, light-headed with relief and gratitude for the school nurse's unexpected ability to lie through her teeth.

"As for you, Mr Pettigrew," she was saying, "it looks like those burns have healed just fine and if you head out now, you'll still catch breakfast. Chop, chop. I'm sure your friends are waiting to see you're all right."

Peter sighed and tried to look pitiable, but Madam Pomfrey shooed him toward the door and eventually he went, with a friendly wave back to Remus.

In the quiet that descended on the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey came and gave Remus' pillows an entirely unnecessary plumping, then paused with one hand on the side of the bed, gazing down at him. Remus couldn't quite read her expression – pity? concern? exasperation? Any would fit. He felt self-conscious anyway, still cringing with the embarrassment of waking up in the hospital wing to find one of his classmates looking at him.

"Thank you, Madam Pomfrey," he managed, hoping she could hear in his tone that he really meant it. "Thank you for –" he couldn't quite bring himself to describe a grown-up as lying, though she had – "Thank you for telling that story in front of Peter."

"It's entirely my own fault," she rejoined brusquely. "Forgot to draw the curtains round your bed when I brought you back in this morning, since there was no one else here. Then Professor Slughorn brought in young Mr Pettigrew, and it was too late to do anything about it. I'm aware he's in your House and year, as well." She was giving him that indefinable look again.

"It's fine, ma'am," Remus murmured, not wanting to have to worry about her distress on top of everything else. "I'm sure he didn't think anything of it."

No, Peter wouldn't, perhaps. Peter was generally credulous. But what about Sirius? Or James? Both of them were too clever by half. Remus felt his stomach slowly contracting into a hard knot of fear. And that on top of the usual post-transformation nausea.

Madam Pomfrey smoothed his forehead with a cool hand. "Well," she said, "you're not going to classes today in any case, and don't try to argue with me this time. I'll bring you a sleeping draught – try to get some rest."

"Thank you, ma'am," Remus said weakly. Madam Pomfrey took such good care of him, when really there was nothing that obligated her to him. Once a month, she stayed up late to make sure he got to the Shrieking Shack safely, and woke up at dawn to spirit him back. She'd probably even get in trouble if anyone outside the school found out she'd been abetting a werewolf… Remus added guilt to the list of things making his stomach roil.

He wondered why Madam Pomfrey put up with him. Why anyone did.

As she bustled away again to fetch the promised sleeping draught, Remus thought he heard her mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, "That poor boy."

– – – – –

Madam Pomfrey didn't release him from the hospital wing until evening. It was probably for the best, Remus supposed, since now he had to try to maintain the illusion that he'd been out of class all day with flu symptoms.

It wasn't even that far from true, since constant panic was making him feel alternately hot and cold, and his skin felt clammy to his own touch. If Madam Pomfrey had offered him the option of simply staying in the hospital wing for the rest of his life and never again having to face another human being, Remus might have taken it.

As it was, she sent him out into the world with nothing more than a sympathetic smile and an enjoinment to drink plenty of fluids. Madam Pomfrey seemed to believe all ailments up to and including lycanthropy could be improved by staying hydrated.

Remus dragged his feet all the way to Gryffindor Tower. Maybe if he went slowly enough, they would all be in bed? Or perhaps he should hurry and get there while the common room was still crowded, so there was less chance of others noticing him come in?

No, maybe if he really went slowly enough, he'd be out past curfew and land directly in detention and not have to see anyone the rest of the evening. Well, or maybe he could just go ahead and get expelled, somehow, before the other Gryffindors had a chance to figure out what he was and he ended up kicked out anyway…

Remus looked up and discovered his feet had delivered him to the portrait hole.

He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and said, "Gillyweed" to the fat lady, who nodded and let him in. He tried to summon all his powers of not being seen as he walked past and around the various groups of students in the common room, making eye contact with no one.

He reached the dormitory, blessedly empty, and flung himself down on his bed in the far corner with a gasp of relief. No one had noticed him. No one had said anything.

_A few more weeks, a few more weeks, _Remus chanted in his head as he burrowed into the bedcovers. Maybe he could just stay here in bed until it was time to ride the Hogwarts Express back home.

Some time later, Remus heard voices and footsteps on the stairs outside the room, and hurriedly tried to look asleep. He could have sworn he heard the words "full moon" just before the door opened and the voices dropped off abruptly.

_I really do have a fever and I'm hallucinating, _Remus told himself firmly. He'd never hoped to be ill so fervently in his life.

It was long after he heard the others drop one by one into peaceful snores that Remus finally fell into an uneasy sleep.

He dreamt Professor McGonagall came and offered him a smoking goblet. "It's the Cure, Mr Lupin!" she declared, the smile on her face sinister in its unfamiliarity. "Drink it," she urged, "and you can finally have friends."

Then it was Madam Pomfrey, forcing the potion to his lips. "Now you're the only human among werewolves," she told him, and when Remus looked around, he saw it was true, all his classmates were transforming. Remus wanted to transform too, but now he couldn't, now he was human. And then it was Peter in front of him, in a hospital bed, grotesquely half-transformed and laughing at Remus...

He woke with a start. Pale dawn light was just beginning to slip in past the curtains. Everyone else was still asleep.

Remus took a few deep breaths. It would be fine. Today would be normal. Peter had seen him in the hospital wing and thought he'd had a bit of the flu, and that was all that had happened. He was overreacting.

Maybe he'd avoid the others today, just in case.

He pulled on clothes and cleaned his teeth, then took his books to the library. No one else would be there this early.

When breakfast time rolled around, Remus decided it would be easier just to skip it. He didn't feel much like eating anyway.

He scooted into the Gryffindors' first class of the morning, History of Magic, at the last possible moment, so that no one would have the chance to talk to him. Was that a lunar phase chart tucked inside Sirius' textbook as he passed? Remus did double-take as he reached the back of the classroom, but it was too late to retrace his steps and check. He'd imagined it. Guilty conscience.

By lunchtime, Remus could no longer ignore the growling of his stomach and the lightness in his head. He sat at the far end of the Gryffindor table and ate as fast as he could. Did Peter glance Remus' way as James whispered something in his ear? No, he'd imagined that too.

He spent the rest of the lunch break in the library.

– – – – –

He should have known.

He should have known when he found the first-year boys' dormitory so conveniently empty that evening. He should have noticed Sirius making sure Ben Davies was engrossed in a protracted game of chess with a fourth-year who didn't usually condescend to play with younger students, should have noticed the way James sent Alvin and Tristan off on some wild Pixie chase about a Ravenclaw girl who had a certain book James insisted McGonagall had said they needed for their Transfiguration homework, while Peter hung about nonchalantly at the foot of the dormitory stairs.

Remus should have noticed all these things, but he had barely slept in two nights and hardly eaten a proper meal in as long, and instead of being suspicious, he was simply grateful for the silence and the chance to fall onto his bed.

And then James and Sirius and Peter were all there.

"Hey, Remus," James said, his tone friendly. All three of them moved closer to Remus' bed, which was in the corner, the far corner. Trapped.

They approached until they were standing in a loose semicircle around Remus where he sat fully alert, quivering, and unable to move.

"We just wanted to talk to you," Sirius said.

"We figured out you're a werewolf!" Peter blurted.

Sirius turned to him and rolled his eyes. "Peter, can't you keep a secret? Ever?"

Peter blushed.

"What we _mean_to say," Sirius continued, "is, well, I suppose – that we figured out you're a werewolf. Eh, seems kind of anticlimactic now. Anyway, you don't have to hide it from us anymore."

James was the only one who seemed to pick up on Remus' discomfort. "Uh, we're not upset or anything," he said.

Remus finally found his voice. "How can you not be upset?" he croaked up at the boys surrounding him. "You've been living with a monster all this time and I never told you."

"You're not a monster," Sirius retorted.

"You help me with my homework," Peter added, as if this were the clear deciding factor.

"Believe me, I've seen monsters," James said, puffing out his chest a little. "And you're not them."

Remus gazed at their faces one by one. Surely if they were going to attack him, they would have done it by now. And if they were going to complain to the Headmaster, or reveal his secret to the rest of the school, they would have done that long before they'd come to talk to him in private. Shakily, Remus stood and faced them.

"Okay," he said. "I don't really understand why, but apparently you're not angry. Just...please don't tell anyone else, okay? I mean, the other boys in the dormitory, if you think it's their right to know too, I understand, but other than that I'd prefer –"

"Remus," Sirius said.

"Mate," James added, "don't be daft, we're not going to tell anyone."

"You don't want to tell anyone?" Remus repeated dubiously.

"Are you kidding? And give away the best secret ever?" Sirius was incredulous. "Remus, you don't seem to be getting it: This is _brilliant._"

Apparently, Remus had been right all along when he thought Sirius was barking mad.

"We'll look out for you, Remus," James promised, eyes shining behind his glasses. "This just means we share something important. We're kind of your Secret-Keepers, you know? We take that seriously."

Peter nodded too.

"Ooh!" interjected Sirius. "We need a team name! And secret code identities."

"All in good _time_, Sirius," James admonished, with the air of one who'd said it many times before.

"A handshake, at least."

The two of them shared one of those expressive looks that were quickly becoming their trademark.

"Yeah, a handshake," James agreed.

They all put their hands into the middle of the circle they formed, reaching across haphazardly until all eight of their hands were clasped.

"To...us," James said.

"To all the adventures to come," Sirius said.

"To secrets," Peter said. "I won't tell anybody, Remus, I promise."

Remus looked around at them and held his head high. "To friendship?" he suggested.

And the four of them shook on that.

– – – – –

EPILOGUE

"Remus."

Remus made a weak attempt at opening his eyes, but gave it up as a bad job.

"_Remus!_"

Applying more effort, Remus was able to drag his eyes open, and gazed blearily at the object directly in front of them. Which was a piece of toast.

"C'mon, hurry and wake up," James said. "Madam Pomfrey let us come in just for a minute to see you, and she doesn't know we smuggled breakfast in too."

Remus blinked some more, and discovered not only James, but also Sirius and Peter behind the piece of toast.

"'R you all doing here?" he managed.

"Like he said," Sirius put in impatiently, "Madam Pomfrey let us in to see you. We begged _very_ angelically."

"Actually, that was just Peter. He's awfully good at kissing up to professors."

"Oh, sod off, James."

"Anyway, we brought you some toast. Thought you might be hungry after the you-know-what." Sirius again.

"And coming back from the you-know-where." That was Peter, sounding important.

"And just generally because it's the you-know-when." James sounded slightly miffed at getting his word in last.

Remus was still stuck on the first bit. "Madam Pomfrey let you in?"

"Yeah, yeah," James said. "We told her that we know. And that we wouldn't breathe a word to anybody."

"But she let you _in_?"

"Reckon she figured you don't have many people on your side, so they might as well at least all be on the same side," James determined.

"No, actually Pete just made those puppy dog eyes at her." That was Sirius.

"Oh, shut _up_."

This last month of becoming mates hadn't been like sliding into an old pair of trainers or onto a familiar broom. It was more like that night under James' Invisibility Cloak – even better than Remus' wildest dreams, but not without its share of awkwardly bumping into each other and stepping on each other's toes.

Remus learnt about being a friend from watching the others – how much you could tease Sirius or Peter without them getting actually angry, how far you should indulge James' flights of fancy before someone needed to take him in hand. How you could ever get a little bit of quiet time, when you shared your bedroom and your life with three boisterous boys.

But all of it was made up for and more those mornings when Remus headed automatically for a seat alone at the end of the breakfast table, then laughed at himself as he realised his mistake and turned his steps toward his waiting friends.

"C'mon," James was saying now, so Remus took the proffered toast and chewed carefully. His stomach was feeling a little squirmy, but he thought that might actually be from happiness, not the transformation.

"Thanks," he said when he'd finished, and he thought all three of them looked pleased.

Madam Pomfrey came out of her office and James gave a guilty start, wiping crumbs from his hands. "Guess we'd better go," he said.

"See ya later, Remus," Peter said with a shy smile.

"Plenty to do, anyway," Sirius declared briskly. "We just saw Snape heading toward the Owlery..."

Remus groaned. Sirius had already landed himself in detention several times in the last month, and he really didn't need another one. "Sirius," he began, "please swear to me – I know you're about to get up to something no good –"

Sirius' face lit up. "No problem. I swear, Remus – no, I _solemnly _swear that I am up to no good." He gave a little salute and a grin, then followed James, who was already tugging at the sleeve of his robes, Peter trailing behind the two of them, as Madam Pomfrey bore down.

"Thanks, Madam Pomfrey!" James called from the doorway. "That was hardly more than two minutes, really, just like we promised."

Sirius looked back at Remus as James pulled him out of the room and mouthed the words, "_Solemnly swear._"

Remus dropped his head back against the pillow and laughed to himself, hardly noticing Madam Pomfrey straightening the covers and feeding him another vile but necessary potion.

In all his life, Remus had never felt so good on the morning after a full moon.

THE END


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